June 07, 2018
Those in the Leave camp maintain that the Brexit vote was clear, despite it now being two years later and Theresa May’s Cabinet still can’t decide what they want, never mind put it to a Parliamentary vote. Indeed, there are so many seemingly impossible conflicts to resolve, each with a cascade of details that will require a team of lawyers, translators and proof-readers to examine even before they get accepted/rejected in London or Brussels, that it’s easy to forget the human element in all this, the people whose lives will be directly affected by a decision that many couldn’t even vote on, those who’ll be left on one side of any new hard border.
At least two groups are looking out for these. One is The 3 Million, “giving a voice to the 3 million EU citizens in the UK”, and the other is British in Europe, which aims to do the same for those British citizens who decided to take advantage of the benefits of free movement and a free labour market to set up shop on the continent and make their lives abroad. It’s these rights, to move within the EU and work there, that seem to have been left off the table in current negotiations.
British in Europe claims there are 1.3 million UK citizens living in the EU – 80% of whom are of working age – and notes that under the current draft Withdrawal Agreement these people will lose the automatic right to resettle and find work in another country, despite having built their lives around access to such rights.
At a public meeting held Wednesday, June 6, in the UK Parliament, representatives from the group laid out their concerns that UK citizens now living in the EU have been forgotten in the negotiations. As The Guardian’s story on this notes:
The Conservative MP John Whittingdale questioned why they [Britons currently living in Europe] should have freedom of movement post-Brexit when Britons living in Britain would not. He was told it was because the 1.2 million invoked European rights in moving to another EU country while Britons at home did not.
So will you be able to accept that job in Trieste? Can your child go to university in Berlin? Is it still possible to retire on the Amalfi coast? As things now stand, with just nine months to go before “leaving”, the British in Europe just don’t know.
