CONSPICIOUS by their absence in yesterday’s Queen’s Speech and in Prime Minister Theresa May’s White Paper on Brexit are any details about what will happen to citizens’ rights after March, 2019.
There are approximately 1.2 million UK citizens resident in the EU and more than three million EU citizens resident here, although anecdotal evidence suggests the latter number is reducing by the day as Brexit’s reality dawns.
The benefits of EU citizenship include the right to travel, live and work anywhere in the EU and the right to be treated equally across the Union. There are a wide range of other rights under EU law regarding health, education, work and social security.
The prospect of losing these rights as well as possibly losing their European identity has caused great concern to very many people in the UK and the Government’s total lack of detail on the issue is itself worrying – Theresa May says only that “a generous offer” will be made.
Dr Tobias Lock, senior lecturer in EU law at Edinburgh University, said: “The EU commissioners produced a paper a few weeks ago setting out what they would like to see in terms of citizens’ rights.
“They are taking a maximalist approach, seeking a guarantee of all citizens’ rights without any time limit, which includes not only the right to stay but also the right to equal treatment with nationals and rights to family reunification without UK immigration law interfering.
“It would apply to all EU citizens resident here at Brexit. In theory those rights would extend to little children so that they could be in place for a hundred years.
“They also want to retain the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice for cases about rights – the UK Government will, of course, disagree with that, but so far all we have heard is sloganising and the UK Government never spells out what it means by citizens’ rights.”
With a soft Brexit, one initiative from Wales could solve a lot of cit-izenship problems. The European Parliament has just been presented with a report called The Feasibility of Associate EU Citizenship for UK Nationals post-Brexit which was prepared for Welsh MEP Jill Evans by researchers at Swansea University, led by Professor Volker Roeben.
They concluded that continued EU citizenship is possible in European and international law, but a new status of associate citizenship might also be created through EU legislation and the withdrawal treaty between the UK and the EU.
They say that no revision of the EU’s founding treaties is necessary to achieve this, and that UK citizenship law is flexible and accepts the principle that people should not be stripped of citizenship against their will. They also say that devolution in the UK brings particular responsibilities for devolved government to protect EU citizenship.
Evans said: “This report is an important contribution to the debate around UK citizens retaining their EU citizenship, or having the right to become associate EU citizens.
“Protecting people’s rights should come first in the negotiations. We need guarantees not only on residency rights, but also on citizenship.
“People should not have their EU citizenship taken away from them against their will. Is not inevitable. Other options exist and this report presents them in detail.
“On the EU27 side, there is a lot of support in principle for the idea of associate citizenship, and an unwavering commitment to securing the rights of citizens. The European Parliament’s resolution proposes to ‘examine how to mitigate [the loss of citizens’ rights] within the limits of Union primary law, and the Euro-pean Commission has insisted that the question of citizens’ rights be a top priority in the negotiations.
“The research … shows that there is indeed a way to mitigate the loss of citizens’ rights, and proposes a way forward.”
In the meantime, we await the Great Repeal Bill and whether it will, as promised, enshrine EU-inspired workers’ rights in British law. After the Queen’s Speech yesterday, TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady homed in on the subject. She said: “Workers’ rights will be put at risk by the Great Repeal Bill. It will allow ministers to bypass parliament and erode rights that come from the EU – such as paid hol-idays and protections for part-time and agency workers.
“The Bill must contain a specific provision to stop ministers going back and undermining the rights of working people.”
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