Category: Uncategorized

The Mythology of Free Movement

We all know immigration was a major issue during the 2016 Referendum. And, we know that some of numbers looked a bit scary at times, particularly when the likes of Nigel Farage filled our TV screens with the ‘threat’ of 80 million Turks, Syrians and Iraqis who would come pouring in!

Farage’s lot in Leave.EU and Michael Gove and Gisela Stuart in the rival Vote Leave, pumped up the issue unmercifully. A series of posters, and some fake news digital ads posted onto Facebook accounts played up the ‘Turkish factor’, offering the electors the choice between 76 million Turks or providing cash for the NHS.

Farage in particular used the numbers game, but never once did he mention one of the key Articles in the EU Directive on Freedom of Movement within the EU. Article 7 could not be clearer, when it states that the ‘Right of residence for more than three months’ shall apply to those wishing to stay: ‘are workers or self-employed persons in the host Member State; have sufficient resources for themselves and their family members not to become a burden on the social assistance system of the host Member State during their period of residence; and have comprehensive sickness insurance cover in the host Member State’.

So, the first ‘myth’ was created – the idea that millions of penniless Romanians and Bulgarians would turn up at Dover looking for work, and immediately start claiming benefits! Farage and others played that card, and Vote Leave in particular targeted their Facebook digital ads – 1½ billion of them – at those constituencies where UKIP had come second in the 2015 General Election. Some of those constituencies had experienced a large influx of migrants, but most had not. Nevertheless the fear of such an invasion was promulgated and expanded, over and over.

Part of the problem arose because the UK Government, and the then Home Secretary in particular, did not use or apply Article 7, and did not require any EU Citizen to return to their Member State if they were found not to have sufficient resources or health insurance to protect their families. We may never know why Theresa May did not apply her policies of the ‘Hostile Environment’ to EU Citizens in the same way as she allowed the Home Office to force that policy on the Windrush Generation.

And, here lay the seeds of the second ‘myth’! That the UK was powerless to stop EU migrants from moving to the UK to find work, and to ‘suck’ benefits ‘out of the system’ away from deserving UK Citizens. The fact is that the UK Government could have removed anyone they found did not meet the requirements of the Directive. Furthermore recently published figures from both the DWP and the HMRC prove that workers in the UK from EU/EEA countries contributed in PAYE and NICs more than 6 times the value of the benefits any of them received legitimately though the existing systems in the financial year 2016/2017.

This puts paid to the third ‘myth’ that free movement allowed EU workers to ‘rob’ UK workers of much-needed benefits.

There is no evidence which suggests that Theresa May ever attempted to ‘put the record straight’! It is therefore all the more surprising that she has probably used the phrase ‘ending free movement’ more than any other in her speeches, her statements in the House of Commons and the hundreds of questions she answered there! But, she really showed her true colours when she referred to ‘queue jumpers’!

IS THIS WOMAN OBSESSED?

Theresa May is obsessed with ‘ending free movement’, and ‘ending rights based immigration’. In framing proposals for ‘settled status’ for EU Citizens working and living in the UK, she has also allowed this to be influenced with her obsession with the policy she used when Home Secretary – the ‘hostile environment’.

For me, as a UK citizen taking advantage of the free movement available to me for 25 years since the coming into law of the Maastricht Treaty, free movement has meant the freedom to move from S.E. London to rural France, to buy a property and settle down to French life. I have the right to live, work, study and love across all National borders throughout the EU, and those rights are also associated with EU Citizenship.

Alas, for me, EU Citizenship is only given to me as a citizen of a Member State, so when that Member State leaves the EU, my EU Citizenship ceases.

But, thanks to Theresa May’s obsession with ‘ending free movement’, something she has repeated so many times, I will lose the rights I have had to free movement as well. From 11:00 p.m. on 29 March I will only be able to exercise my free movement rights within France. I will be banned from establishing a right of residence, for example, in another EU country, such as Spain, Italy, or Portugal, if I decided I needed more sunny days for my aching joints!

The EU has decided to enforce EU law on me because they will designate me as a ‘Third Country National’, a TCN, from 29 March. And, as a TCN I will no longer have the same rights I have had for the past 25 years. So, despite the promises and guarantees made many times by Theresa May that my life would be ‘the same on the day after as it was on the day before’, she has made sure that will not be the case!

On 5th April 2017, the EU Chief Negotiator, Michel Barnier told the European Parliament: “For European citizens in the United Kingdom and vice versa: the continuity and reciprocity of the rights they currently enjoy must be effectively guaranteed, without discrimination”.

It took the UK 82 days to respond. However, the UK’s answer was to wave two digits at Michel Barnier, and launch detailed proposals in their ‘position paper’ for imposing something to be called ‘Settled Status’ on every EU Citizen living in the UK.

Just 17 days after the publication of the ‘position paper’, Michel Barnier, giving evidence to a Select Committee of the House of Lords, responded in this way: “We have a problem with the British paper on some of the reciprocal rights and the enforcement of those rights. If I read it properly, the proposal would mean that Union rights would be applied to British citizens resident in the Union and that British law would be applied to EU citizens in the UK, but we know that British law will be less favourable, so we have a problem with reciprocity. We have a problem with lack of certainty in relation to the implementation of British law and the jurisdictional aspect to the British courts without any guarantees on future laws. The procedure will be very heavy and cumbersome. Citizens with their children will all have to make individual requests to the UK on the basis of the British paper, which contains many expressions that are not legally clear: “We wish”, “We are prepared to”, “We hope”. We have a basis for working together; we have some substance there, and I would like to have that kind of substance on the other subjects as well.”

That revealed what we had suspected – settled status is not the same as the rights EU Citizens in the UK have now, and the EU is going to reciprocate the strident demands for reciprocity which Theresa May repeated over and over.

Although I am speaking for myself, I am much more concerned for the 80% of Brits working and living across the EU who are of working age or younger. Their lives and their livelihoods are about to be turned upside down by the obsessive behaviour of Theresa May!

It is so easy to blame the EU for their hard line. For me it would not have happened had it not been for Theresa May’s obsession with ‘ending free movement’!

Why can the 3.6 million EU Citizens in the UK not simply have their existing rights confirmed? The rights they have now were given to them by the EU. They will have to apply for, and pay for something less than the rights they have had for 25 years!

Whatever your position on Brexit, there is no way what is happening matches up to the ‘promises’ Theresa May made in her Lancaster House speech, or the ‘guarantees’ she offered in her Florence speech. When she claims that she gave ‘priority’ to citizens’ rights she is not telling the truth!