Sunday 5 March 2017

The House of Lords and EU Citizens

The House of Lords has recently voted to amend the Brexit bill to guarantee the right of EU nationals to remaining the UK continued residency.

While some may say this is a good thing and the Lords are doing their job, let's actually stop and think about this.

If the House of Lords is to do their job as a revising chamber properly, why are they passing amendments supporting the rights of the EU citizens in Europe to remain in Britain, but saying nothing about British Citizens in EU?

In actual fact of course both sets of people should have their existing rights grandfathered.

So why has this not been done? Well the EU does not wish to discuss anything before Article 50 is triggered. They say they can not discuss anything until then. This is sheer hypocrisy. If Donald Tusk and the European Council were prepared to, they could easily come to an agreement with the UK government to allow those people who already are living across the forthcoming EU / UK to remain with grandfathered rights in their current country of residence.

It is right and proper that EU citizens in the UK should be allowed to stay post Brexit. However this can only be guaranteed if the UK citizens elsewhere in the EU have the same right. This could be sorted now if the EU were prepared to discuss this now ahead of the main Brexit negotiations. They won't do this for dogmatic reasons. It's the EU that is stopping a clarification of expats status. This is an example of what's wrong with the EU. They are more interested in their processes and dogma than real people with their concerns. This just shows that we are right to leave.