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Let Britons keep freedom of movement, says EU's Brexit negotiator EU Brexit negotiator: 'Let Britons keep freedom of movement'
(about 3 hours later)
British citizens should be able to keep various benefits of EU membership including freedom of movement after Brexit, the European parliament’s chief negotiator has said. British citizens should be able to choose to keep various benefits of EU membership, including freedom of movement, the European parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator has said.
Guy Verhofstadt said Britons could be allowed to keep certain rights if they applied for them on an individual basis. “All British citizens today have also EU citizenship. That means a number of things: the possibility to participate in the European elections, the freedom of travel without problem inside the union. Guy Verhofstadt said he hoped to convince European leaders to allow Britons to maintain certain rights if they apply for them on an individual basis.
“We need to have an arrangement in which this arrangement can continue for those citizens who on an individual basis are requesting it.” His comments come as Theresa May attends the final EU leaders’ spring summit in Brussels on Friday before she is expected to trigger article 50, which could come as soon as next week.
Verhofstadt made the comments as European leaders meet in Brussels for the EU spring summit. He warned that the European parliament was committed to ensuring countries outside the union did not have a better deal than those within it, BBC 5 Live reported. Boris Johnson has urged the prime minister to reject EU demands for a“divorce bill” estimated at up to £52bn, but a Conservative MEP said the UK was “very close” to an agreement on the costs of Brexit and the rights of expats.
Verhofstadt has previously said the EU needs to be “open and generous” to individual UK citizens and said politicians were considering how to allow them to maintain their ties to the continent. Verhofstadt told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “All British citizens today have also EU citizenship. That means a number of things: the possibility to participate in the European elections, the freedom of travel without problem inside the union ...
He told an audience at Chatham House in January: “We are scrutinising, thinking, debating how we could achieve that … that individual UK citizens would think their links with Europe are not broken.” “We need to have an arrangement in which this … can continue for those citizens who on an individual basis are requesting it.”
But the former Belgian prime minister said the European parliament was committed to ensuring that countries outside the EU did not have a better deal than member states.
He also warned that the European parliament will have veto powers and could reject any deal brokered between the UK and European commission.
Verhofstadt claimed to have received more than 1,000 letters from British citizens who do not want to lose their relationship with “European civilisation” and criticised the remain campaign for speaking “only about economics” rather than voters’ emotional connection to the continent. Some Britons felt they were “losing a part of their identity” by having their EU citizenship taken away, he said.
He described Brexit as a “tragedy, disaster, catastrophe” for the EU and said the rights of UK citizens living in the EU and EU citizens living in Britain would be his first priority for negotiations after article 50 is triggered, beginning the formal process of Britain leaving the bloc.
EU and UK citizens “cannot be the victim of the political games we have seen”, Verhofstadt said. Reaching a deal on their futures will be the “first chapter” of a withdrawal agreement that Verhofstadt said needs to be finalised by November or December at the latest.
The withdrawal agreement will also include a deal on the size of the divorce bill and the transition arrangements, he said. The remainder of the two-year leaving period will be spent starting to define the nature of Britain’s future partnership with the rest of the bloc.
He ruled out a return to a “hard border” between Northern Ireland and the Republic, warning that this could threaten the peace process. “What cannot happen is that we destroy all the efforts that have been undertaken [in] the last 20-30 years to have peace there, so no hard border, we cannot return to the hard border,” he said.
Verhofstadt had previously said the EU needed to be “open and generous” to individual British citizens and that politicians were considering how to enable them to maintain their ties to the continent.
He told an audience at Chatham House in January: “We are scrutinising, thinking, debating how we could achieve that. That individual UK citizens would think their links with Europe are not broken.”
In December, EU insiders warned that the plan would face political opposition from MEPs and it contradicted European leaders who had said there would be no sweetheart deal for the UK. Such an arrangement would need to be approved by the 27 remaining member states.
Formal negotiations cannot begin until May triggers article 50, which she has promised to do by the end of March, but the Conservative MEP Vicky Ford told the Today programme the UK and EU were nearing agreement on a potential Brexit divorce bill and the rights of Britons living in other EU countries.
“Both sides are very close on the money,” Ford said. “The EU are saying they will only ask us to contribute what we’ve committed to and the prime minister is saying we don’t walk away from commitments. If that principle is agreed, then we can move on.”
On Thursday, Johnson, the foreign secretary, called on May to emulate Margaret Thatcher and resist EU demands for money, but the Irish taoiseach, Enda Kenny, was among the EU leaders supporting a fee.
Verhofstadt said the financial discussions were a political negotiation. “I think it will be possible finally to find an agreement,” he told Today.