Brits in Europe - deal or no deal?

[EthelThePiratesDaughter]

This is a thread for British Mumsnetters living in another EU country to talk about what happens after next March if there is a deal or if there isn't.

I know that many things are unknown at this stage but I thought it could be a useful place for us to share whatever information we have and offer advice or support.

It would be nice if people could share a little bit of (non outy) information about themselves.

I'm in my early 30s, living in France since 2017, married to a French man and working locally. I plan to apply for French citizenship but won't be eligible until 2022.

My understanding at the moment is that if a deal is done it will include something on citizens' rights attempting to preserve the rights of people who have exercised their treaty rights before the withdrawal date. I guess this would include the right to stay living where we are at the moment but possibly not the right to move to another EU country. (I'm not worried about that part as my husband is French, so if we wanted to move to another EU country I could ironically find myself having more rights than I do in France, as per the Surinder Singh case.) What about short term travelling? Is it possible to have the right to live in one member state due to grandfathered treaty rights, but need a Schengen visa to go on holiday in another? Anyone know?

In the event of no deal I have literally no clue what happens. Do we just become illegal immigrants overnight?

And it's potentially an issue for the children of EU citizens living in the UK too. Residency rights can be lost if you are out of the country for a period of time.

There are no guarantees on either side, except that all of us will lose a big chunk of the rights that we enjoy today.

It's sad that I can guarantee no matter what, something will go wrong, and people will end up disenfranchise/de-pensioned (?)/evicted/deported. On a scale that will make Windrush look like the dress rehearsal it was. (Have already established that for all the faux media "concern", nobody actually gives a fuck )

Absolutely guarantee it. If William Hill opened a book on it, the odds wouldn't make it worth a bet.

I can also guarantee that when it happens, the official response will be :

Oh dear. We had no idea

I just thank my lucky stars that my kids have dual nationality. But the vast majority of British families in France are not in that position and will face this uncertainty about their children's residency rights.

And the UK government has done the square root of fuck all to protect the rights of its citizens. If this issue had been resolved and ringfenced from the start - instead of making EU citizens in the UK into bargaining chips - we might not be in this position.

Although it would be great to have a decisive statement from the EU, to be fair to them they have no idea how far the UK stupidity is going, bearing in mind all the really good decisions the UK are making.

And the UK government has done the square root of fuck all to protect the rights of its citizens.

Why, it's almost as if they don't care.

Although it would be great to have a decisive statement from the EU,

It's not really an EU issue though. Immigration from third countries is not an EU competency. It's down to individual member states.

Yes, Rossetti-totally agree

In Sweden on a temporary residence permit, in two years i can renew it and will most likely get permanent residence but I’m unsure if it’ll be as simple as it should be as my renewal will be during the transition period, not sure if I’ll be an EU citizen or not during that time!

Although it would be great to have a decisive statement from the EU

Ultimately, the EU is a political organisation, so has to sell whatever it comes up with back to it's constituents. Which means they need to be mindful that their "give" needs to be proportionate to the UKs "give". Otherwise it's not impossible to envisage a future where EU-resident Brits become persecuted for having a better deal than the UK-resident EU citizens. Obviously that's no problem for the UK, since UK citizens abroad don't count. But it might concern some EU member states.

It wasn’t so much the permanent residency which concerned us, more the loss of freedom of movement within the eu. Especially for the DCs and their opportunities going forward.

English teacher starting his third academic year in Italy here.

Pretty sure the way things are going with the 5* and xenophobia we're going to get kicked out. This government has basically been elected on the back of "we're sick of the rest of the EU not having its shit together and not helping us with North african migration" and has just proposed a huge raft of cuts to immigrant rights. They might lobby the UK and say something like "give us a trade deal or we'll kick out all the Brit immigrants" and London will shrug and not give a crap. I'm pretty certain that next year I will have no legal right to work in Italy.

Ah well, it was getting time to go to the Middle East anyway.

The UK are acting on behalf of the people that live there. The UK can't force the EU/individual states to do the right thing, they can only speak for themselves, and have pledged to make all the residing EU citizens welcome indefinitely.

Given the problems the UK is experiencing with mass immigration as many see it , and you may not be aware of them if you are living overseas, you may understand why brexit has happened in the first place. Some consideration of what it is like to have your child in a class of 36 or to wait 4 weeks for a doctors appointment may be fuelling the problems here. Our GP has employed four new doctors in the last year and it is still not enough. I do understand why some people say enough. My sympathy goes to those that are caught up with the changes in other countries, I am hopeful of a deal that will work for those overseas, and especially for those still in the UK.

The UK are acting on behalf of the people that live there.

No they're not. The Uk hasn't given a moments thought to UK citizens in the EU. It started by denying them a vote in the referendum, and hasn't changed since.

You can't really expect your needs to outweigh those that are remain living in the UK and indeed are paying the taxes and keeping the country going. If you have chosen to make your home elsewhere, then that is the risk you take. You can't expect an umbrella of protection from the UK.

You always have the option to come home, and you are fortunate to have a prosperous country to return to.

Indeed it is prosperous because we are all here and working hard still.

You can't really expect your needs to outweigh those that are remain living in the UK and indeed are paying the taxes and keeping the country going. If you have chosen to make your home elsewhere, then that is the risk you take. You can't expect an umbrella of protection from the UK.

So every UK citizen is to be treated as a little self contained unit ? No children. No partner. No parents. No family ties. To be fair, that sounds exactly like the Tory vision of Britain.

Some consideration of what it is like to have your child in a class of 36 or to wait 4 weeks for a doctors appointment may be fuelling the problems here.

Only last week the Home Office released the most in-depth study they've ever conducted. It states that EU migrants have no noticable effect on school places, healthcare, wages or housing, beyond the inability of our own government to effectively govern by building an appropriate amount of houses, and allocating enough tax money to our services. Oh, and EU migrants contribute on average 2300 pounds more in tax per person, per year, than English residents.

The part that induces rage in me is the number of people believing the filth that spews out of people like Farage.

You can't really expect your needs to outweigh those that are remain living in the UK and indeed are paying the taxes and keeping the country going. If you have chosen to make your home elsewhere, then that is the risk you take. You can't expect an umbrella of protection from the UK.

I'm sorry, what?

I pay tax in the UK. I make my national insurance contributions every month the same as I always have.

I'm sorry that you think I'm being unreasonable in expecting that our membership of the EU, which has been the way of things since before I was born, would continue, and base my career choices around it. I guess people in the USA are equally unreasonable that they assume that New York isn't going to randomly secede from the union when they choose to work there.

Short of WW3, nobody actually thought the UK would be retarded enough to leave the EU. I guess our "wealthy" country should pat itself on the back for defying expectations. We'll see how that goes during the recession next year.

The UK are acting on behalf of the people that live there.

Tory spam isn't going to go down well on a thread about the lived experience of British migrants.

The Tories do not give a fuck about us, even though many Britons in Europe still pay UK taxes - for eg those on government pensions (ex civil service, ex military, possibly ex teachers too).

The Uk hasn't given a moments thought to UK citizens in the EU. It started by denying them a vote in the referendum, and hasn't changed since.

This. It needs repeating loud, clear and often. If the Tories had had our interests and concerns at heart, they would have granted us a vote and made us a priority in negotiations. They didn't and they still don't.

It's worth remembering that David Cameron - to appease his own fucking shitbag fascists - quite happily changed the housing benefit rules for UK citizens in the UK, just so he could "shove it to Pedro".

Don't ever, ever, ever, try and tell me that any Tory gives a shit about his fellow citizen.

I wouldn't trust anything May says about anything:

she has a history of "hostile environment" to furrin
and she reneged on the December draft she agreed with the EU

Her ministers keep saying that anything agreed can be changed.

I won't believe her "promise" until it is in a legally binding document, with penalties for reneging, signed and approved by Parliament

I won't believe her "promise" until it is in a legally binding document, with penalties for reneging, signed and approved by Parliament

And with ECJ oversight. Because already government ministers (Gove ...) have talked about rolling back whatever is agreed.

Do we just become illegal immigrants overnight?

I don't think so. Many of us would be within residency requirements and up until that date our entry and stay would have been perfectly legal.

I am worried about being bumped off the health service computer again. Happened when Rumania joined the EU. The system collapsed and some of us didn't find out we hadn't¡t been reentred until we had raging tonsillitis and the GP couldn't treat us

I've been in Italy since ... somewhere just after the mid nineties. Married to an a Italian for yonks. Have 18 yo mini Italian I made with my very own body. Both of whom joke about hiding me in the attic if push comes to shove. Oh ha bloody ha. I hate spiders. Am not going up there.

I assume there'll be a work around, possibly at the last minutes. Maybe with each nation sticking to a central order from Brussels to sort us out and coming up with their own national system. Which means ours will be 3 months late and involve a lot of queuing and being bounced from office to office to get a signature that all the offices insist is not their responsibility and anyway the person that does that is off sick this decade.

Actually the attic isn't looking too bad in comparison

Right after the ref, the EU proposed keeping all rights for all expats, Brits and E27
That could have been settled immediately

However, May refused this, because she wanted to remove some of those rights

Unless expat rights are agreed in a formal Withdrawal Agreement - they were already written into Barnier's December draft - then the EU's right to negotiate and specify expat rights in the EU stops on Brexit Day.

After this, the UK will become a 3rd country and UK expat rights will all depend on what the 27 individual countries have as rules for 3rd country citizens applying for residence.

I don't expect the UK govt to do anything useful on my behalf - too chaotic - but at least the E27 have their existing procedures for 3rd countries.

What the UK also needs to guarantee is that it will continue to participate in the system by which all 33 EEA countries refund the healthcare of their expat pensioners to the host health system.

Otherwise, a lot of UK pensioners, especially in Spain, will have to return to the UK
The EU is likely to give visas to existing workers, even without a deal, but pensioners would be a drain on them, without refunding of healthcare

Then the NHS - and the care system - will suddenly have to cope with a huge influx of the elderly, with far higher needs than the mostly young E27 workers who are leaving the UK
Many of these elderly won't have homes in the UK either, so will need housing - and housing that is suitable for them / possibly adapted.
Also, they may be disoriented, as some may have not lived in the UK for decades