Theresa May plays the wrong card on EU citizens’ rights

The latest outburst from Theresa May with regard to the EU is completely counterproductive. She is throwing away what she had gained from the limited but still genuine expressions of approval from EU leaders following her Florence speech. Furthermore, she has reinforced her negative image in Brussels following the earlier criticism of Theresa May’s government by the European Parliament on September 26th when it recommended that trade talks should not be initiated because “sufficient progress has not yet been made on citizens’ rights, Ireland and the Northern Ireland (sic), and the settlement of the United Kingdom’s financial obligations”. The UK Government realizes that it still has a long way to go on all three issues, and that with the current negotiating period now nearing the half time break, its present stubborn stance on all those issues could eventually lead to no agreement being reached at all. Most of the government knows full well that such an outcome would be a disaster. That is why her latest outburst about the possibility of no deal and its impact on EU and British citizens' rights is the voice of despair.
The European Parliament may not be directly involved in the negotiations, but it has the final veto on anything that is negotiated. The most emotional issue for Euro MPs is the question of citizens’ rights and the one on which they are least likely to compromise. Finance is a hard-headed issue which will eventually end up with some last minute stop-the-clock kind of bargaining down to the wire with which EU institutions are familiar every time a budget is discussed. The Irish border question is, frankly, a regional issue, albeit a crucial one, as it will reflect what happens on the UK’s main borders as well. Yet the question of EU citizens’ rights in the UK and UK citizens’ rights abroad appears to be the most intransigent, even though both sides pretend that they want the same thing – the preservation of EU citizens’ rights. Even if the EU negotiators may feel they could come to a compromise on this with the British government, they know that the European Parliament will not let them.
Both sides now agree that EU citizens and their families in this country should be allowed to stay with full working rights, access to the same pensions, benefits and health services as UK citizens, while those who have not yet worked off their full 5 years to achieve the right to stay should be given time to complete those years. What is more, public sentiment in the UK is not divided on this matter. Opinion polls show a distinct majority in favour of EU citizens retaining their rights as before. The right to vote in local elections and the European Health Insurance card are also likely to be retained provided talks are not broken off and both sides are working towards agreeing continuing mutual recognition of academic and professional qualifications. In her letter to “the3million group”, who have been putting the case for the 3.z million EU citizens in this country, Theresa May still maintains that she wants to “make sure that no one who has made their home in this country will have to leave, that families will be able to stay together, and that people can go on living their lives as before.”
Yet practice has belied the Prime Minister’s words, not only for the period after Brexit, but even now, while the UK is still supposedly in the EU and subject to its directives. The Home Office is already treating EU citizens as if they were subject only to UK Immigration rules, deporting vulnerable EU citizens, depriving EU children of British passports previously granted to them and authorizing health authorities to charge EU citizens for their services. Furthermore, as a show of UK sovereignty the Home Office has already announced that the current EU based permanent residence scheme is to be abolished and is advising community groups that all 3.2 million EU citizens should apply to register for a new form of “settled status”. EU citizens will now have to apply afresh in the space of 2 years for rights they currently already have, rather than having them merely confirmed, while existing rights to unite families and to return to the UK after a 2 year stay abroad will be abolished after Brexit. The British government is drawing a red line over leaving EU citizens under the protection of the European Court of Justice.
Yet the European Parliament has also drawn a red line over accepting a UK administered settled status which would leave EU citizens at the tender mercies of a regrettably compromised Home Office officialdom, bent on attaining the Government’s impossible target of a ceiling of 100,000 immigrants a year. We have an impasse.
Despite this, it is on EU citizens’ rights that the UK government could show a bold and truly generous initiative which would cut the administrative logjam, restore confidence of EU citizens in this country and UK citizens abroad about their future, and convince the EU negotiators and the EU parliament that it would be possible to bring forward the future trade talks which the UK desires. The government could recognize that the 3.2 million EU citizens is a large but a finite group in numbers whose contribution to the UK economy and to its social fabric is overwhelmingly positive and that they should all be allowed to retain their acquired rights including the equivalence of permanent residence or the continuation of the existing pathway to obtaining that status. A certified record of this new status should be offered to all of them proactively through the channels of local authorities who already have records on them as taxpayers, voters, entrepreneurs, pensioners, students or schoolchildren. It should be a lifetime status for all current residents and their children as individuals and they would also be eligible after a further year to apply for UK citizenship. As long as this status is similar to permanent residence it can be reciprocated easily by the EU with a similar status for UK citizens abroad. A separate early agreement on this status could be guaranteed by a mutually agreed international body to which all citizens could appeal. Nothing new there as a similar form of supervision is already being envisaged by the UK for future commercial disputes with EU countries. Nor is it a concession that would have negative political repercussions as most Leave campaigners have always argued that EU citizens currently here should be allowed to stay. No need therefore for a divided Cabinet to panic over a new “concession”.
There is also a precedent for such a blanket entry system granted to a finite group to whom the UK government has had obligations. The Labour government did this in 1947 with the Polish Resettlement Act when all 215,000 Polish soldiers and their civilian dependents in Western Europe were allowed to settle in the UK, regardless of their political or social status and regardless of whether some of them had previously been conscripted into the Wehrmacht. This was followed by a further similar decision over 86,000 displaced Europeans living in camps in Germany and Austria. The beneficiaries of these decisions were given full access to education, payment of war pensions, assistance with finding employment and the right eventually to apply to be British subjects. This decision was a clear-cut and honourable conclusion to those left stranded by Poland’s tragic fate after Yalta, and saved the UK government from responding to heart-breaking stories of Polish soldiers being forcibly repatriated to a Communist country. Admittedly the numbers were somewhat smaller but the principle was the same.
Similarly, such a blanket decision on 3.2 million EU citizens would also be the clear-cut and honourable conclusion to a vexed issue. It would also break down the logjam with the EU negotiations and open up the chance for the EU negotiations to cover the more promising issues of trade, financial services and the environment. Can Theresa May screw up the courage to do this in time for the sixth round of negotiations?

Wiktor Moszczynski 10/10/2017