BRUSSELS – EU nationals will be allowed to remain in Britain after Brexit with guaranteed rights similar to those of UK citizens under plans outlined by prime minister Theresa May to the leaders of the other 27 member states over dinner on Thursday evening.
In the first substantive Brexit proposal from the UK government, May offered a new “settled status” for EU citizens who have resided in the UK for five years at a date to be specified between the triggering of Article 50 and Britain’s formal exit from the European Union. Any EU citizen in the UK for less than five years by that date will be allowed to stay until they have five years of residence to obtain the settled status.
The aim of the status will be to treat EU citizens as if they were UK citizens for education, benefits, pensions, and healthcare rights.
At the dinner, May outlined the key principles of Britain’s offer to protect the rights of EU citizens living in the UK. These include:
A commitment that no EU citizen currently in the UK lawfully will be asked to leave the country at the point that the UK leaves the EU, and all EU citizens lawfully in the country at the point the UK leaves will have the opportunity to regularise their status to remain in the country. The prime minister told leaders that the UK does not want anyone here to have to leave, nor does it want families to be split up.
A specified cut-off date that would fall within a window no earlier than date of the Article 50 notification letter [29 March 2017], and no later than the exit date [29 March 2019]. The specific date will be subject of the Brexit negotiations, but May made clear that EU citizens currently in the UK will have their rights protected by EU law until the day Britain leaves the EU.
A grace period: the length of this period is still to be determined but expected to be up to two years, to allow people to regularise their status so to avoid a cliff edge. All EU citizens either in the UK today or arriving before Britain leaves the EU will have the opportunity to regularise their status under the new rules.
A streamlined administration: May signalled that the administration of this system would be as streamlined as possible using digital tools to register people in a light-touch way. In effect, the UK is all but binning the current 85-page residency application process.
The prime minister said the proposal was contingent on reciprocity, that her priority in setting out the principles was to provide reassurance and certainty to EU citizens as quickly as possible, and that both sides should seek to agree terms early in the Brexit talks.
“The UK's position represents a fair and serious offer,'' May said. “One aimed at giving as much certainty as possible to citizens who have settled in the UK, building careers and lives, and contributing so much to our society.''
The government will publish a detailed paper with the proposals on Monday. The UK’s commitments to EU citizens would be enshrined in UK law, and would be enforceable by UK courts.
From May’s remarks alone it is not clear exactly how the UK proposal will match up to the full suite of rights, including the derived rights of family members, that are currently enjoyed by EU nationals residing in the UK as well as by Britons living elsewhere in the EU. It was also unclear whether reciprocal arrangements elsewhere in the EU could lead to Britons losing some of their existing rights, and how the proposal could affect individuals who fall between the cracks, for example if they were to leave the country, graduates looking for work after completing their studies, or people who become temporarily jobless while working towards the five years needed to achieve the settled status.
The government is expected to provide detailed answers to some of these questions in next week’s plan.
Meanwhile, the mayor of London Sadiq Khan said the plan fell short of giving EU citizens the certainty they need to make long-term plans for themselves or their families.
“It is unacceptable for the Prime Minister to be treating EU citizens living here and contributing to our economy and society as bargaining chips,” Khan said.
The PM's plan doesn't come close to fully guaranteeing the rights of the 3 million EU nationals living in the UK.… https://t.co/9SENVGBYTX
BuzzFeed News understands that the views among the EU27 leaders are mixed. A number think the proposals are a positive first step. Others are concerned that the plan would see the family members of EU citizens lose existing rights, or that the proposed system could lead to a two-tier system of EU nationals in the UK.
German chancellor Angela Merkel said the proposal was a "good start" but also that there were "many, many other questions" about Brexit and there was "still a lot to do".
Arriving at the European Council on Friday morning, the president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker said May's offer was a first step but not sufficient. His view was shared by Poland's Europe minister.
The UK proposal comes after the European Commission’s Brexit task force published a paper outlining its position on how to guarantee the rights of EU citizens. It is aiming for all existing rights of EU citizens and their family members to be protected, and to agree a detailed plan to enable this. But the crux of this debate isn’t only about protecting all existing rights, but also how to guarantee them reciprocally in future. The EU argues that there needs to be a mechanism to settle any disputes and protect citizens from possible changes in national legislation, in the UK or elsewhere in Europe. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is one possible arbiter of any accord (and of the overall UK-EU exit deal).
“You wouldn’t have this guarantee just through UK courts,” an EU official told BuzzFeed News.
Having made ending the jurisdiction of the ECJ one of her primary objectives, May is in effect being asked to cross one of her red lines or to come up with an analogous mechanism. There is no sign the prime minister is prepared to take such a step.
May made her remarks over dinner at the end of the first day of the European Council.
The EU leaders did not get into discussions with the prime minister over dinner. The focus of this week’s European Council is security and defence cooperation, trade policy, climate action, and migration, not Brexit.
Instead, they listened to what May had to say before moving on to have coffee without her and to discuss criteria to relocate the EU’s banking and medicines agencies from London.
"She was heard, but not given a reaction," a senior EU government official told BuzzFeed News.
The 27 have mandated the European Commission to negotiate Brexit on their behalf and do not want to open the door to any attempt by May to negotiate directly with the other leaders.
At a press conference earlier on Thursday, European Council president Donald Tusk said: "It must be clear that the European Council is not a forum for Brexit negotiations. We have our negotiators for this. Leaders will only take note of the negotiations."
During a bilateral meeting with Tusk earlier in the day, May is understood to have told him that she absolutely understood the principle but was glad to have the opportunity to sketch out her proposals to the other leaders before details were released next week.
Following the election there have been a growing number of voices calling for the UK to negotiate a long transitional arrangement with the EU in order to avoid a cliff edge. Chief among these is chancellor Philip Hammond. He has used several media appearances and a major speech this week to argue that leaving with no deal would be a bad outcome, and that the government should put jobs and the economy first.
But any talk of what a transitional deal might look like is still months away, EU officials say.
“There are conditions for a transitional deal: We need to know where we’re going, it has to be a time-limited arrangement, and it has to be legal,” an EU official told BuzzFeed News. Negotiating guidelines agreed earlier this year by the EU27 make clear that their key principles would also apply to any interim deal. The UK will not be allowed to cherry-pick the bits of the EU it likes best, even on a temporary basis.
Before getting to a stage where the EU will be prepared to look at the future EU-UK relation and negotiate a potential transitional deal, there will need to be agreement on a clear methodology over how to calculate the amount of money the UK owes the EU and clarity on a number of other separation issues, as well as the agreement to guarantee the rights of EU citizens.
On the first day of Brexit talks on Monday, the UK’s Brexit secretary David Davis and the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier agreed to the EU’s timetable for the negotiations, and established working groups to deal with these issues first: “citizens' rights”, “financial settlement”, and “other separation issues”.
In each of these areas “sufficient progress” will need to be made for the talks to move on to a second phase where the aim will be to scope out the future UK-EU relationship.
Achieving sufficient progress will not be easy, EU officials say.
“The idea that these issues can be sorted in weeks is incorrect thinking. There will be proper benchmarks,” one official said, noting that negotiating guidelines set out by the 27 EU member states make clear that it will be for the 27 leaders to determine if, and when, sufficient progress has been made.
“We could end up with a compromise in how everything is packaged, in a way that is acceptable to UK voters, but nothing has changed with the election in terms of the EU’s negotiating values and principles,” the official added.
Meanwhile, the financial settlement working group has been tasked with coming up with a methodology for calculating the size of the so-called Brexit bill once the UK leaves in 2019.
“The two sides will need to agree to a method that if two separate people do the calculations they reach more or less the same figure,” a senior EU official said.
The EU’s negotiating guidelines also state that ensuring there isn’t a legal vacuum immediately after the UK leaves the EU is to be tackled in the first stage of talks – and this will be the focus of the third working group.
An EU official with insight into how the talks were being structured told BuzzFeed News: “These ‘other issues’ are not simple. The working group is likely to be divided up into subgroups looking at things like how nuclear safety standards will be ensured once the UK exits the Euratom agency, or how the administrative and regulatory functions and standards set by other EU agencies will be carried out, what happens to new goods entering the market, ongoing legal processes, and so on.”
Another top priority in the early stages of negotiations will be finding a solution that avoids the introduction of a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland after the UK leaves the single market and the customs union.
Unlike the other first-phase issues, it will not be tackled in a working group but through a dialogue led by the two most senior officials in Davis and Barnier’s respective teams, permanent secretary of the Brexit department Oliver Robbins and the EU’s deputy chief negotiator Sabine Weyand.
An EU official told BuzzFeed News that this format reflects the importance that both sides have placed on this issue, and would also allow for more flexibility. The official noted how the issue was more fluid compared to the other first-phase matters, and discussions would in all likelihood extend beyond the first phase of negotiations because it depends on the shape of the future UK-EU relationship.
Both sides have repeatedly said they want to find a solution that avoids a hard border as a matter of priority. However, with the UK having set its sights on leaving both the single market and the customs union, workable solutions have so far been in short supply.
Officials told BuzzFeed News the atmosphere during the first day of negotiations was positive but were hoping for more substantive discussions when the two sides convene again in mid-July.
“Although 17 July is long way away in political terms…” one official noted.
The same official said there was no clear deadline for when the first phase of talks would end, but October, in time for that month’s European Council, was an indicative target.