Comment on Theresa May speech in Florence

I see it as a step forward that Theresa May is recognizing the need for “new dispute resolution mechanisms” (presumably international and approved also by the ECJ) to resolve commercial disputes with the EU in post-Brexit Britain. It shows that “sovereignty” is not after all an absolute concept.

This mechanism should be extended also to the issue of EU citizens currently in this country and their British counterparts living in EU countries.

It was a welcome if somewhat cautious step forward in the right direction for her to say that UK courts resolving issues of EU citizens’ status in the UK would be “able to take into account the judgements of the European Court of Justice with a view to ensuring consistent interpretation” but surely it would be better to reassure the EU negotiators that its citizens could have the same international protection that she proposes for EU companies. In saying this I am not imputing the impartiality of British judges but I am aware that in the present purely British legal format of “settled status” most decisions on EU citizens would be made and enforced not by British judges but by Home Office officials, applying Immigration Rules, which are wholly inappropriate for EU citizens who have been residing here legally for many decades. Because of recent Home Office howlers on sending EU citizens deportation notices and using obsolete interpretations on comprehensive sickness insurance to refuse permanent residence, confidence in Home Office measures by EU countries is practically nil.

EU citizens here are seen by the EU as hostages being held by the British government in the current dispute and Theresa May should know that EU negotiators will remain intransigent on other issues, such as future trade talks, until those hostages are released by the removal of “settled status” and a simpler proactive speeded up registration system be introduced for the current permanent residence status. This way the rights of EU citizens here and UK citizens in Europe need not “diverge” as she feared. Also the mass hemorrhage of EU citizens uncertain of their future is already hurting British industry, agriculture and the NHS and it is in Britain's interest to encourage them to stay by resolving the uncertainties. An open-ended resolution to allow all of them to stay with the exception of those who are recognized by a British judge as an immediate threat to security in this country is the best solution. It was done before very successfully with the Polish Resettlement Act of 1947 which allowed 300,000 Polish soldiers and civilians, mostly without documents, to settle here at the end of the Second World War.

Incidentally, in her speech Mrs May referred only to the registration of EU citizens arriving after March 2019. Is she no longer pursuing the new registration for settled status of those already here?