Lisa O’Carroll joins Jon henley to discuss the question of rights for both EU residence in the UK and UK residents in the EU, in light of recent events.
There’s currently no guarantee of status for the 3 million EU nationals currently living in the UK after Brexit. It’s been reported that the UK government is now deliberately trying to discourage EU nationals from applying for permanent residence in Britain. Rather than moving straight to filling out an 85-page permanent residency form, EU citizens are instead being asked to sign up for “emailed news alerts” that will tell them if and when they need to take action over their UK residence.
The Labour party’s Brexit minister, Keir Starmer, has promised that a Labour government – should one be elected in June’s UK general elections – would offer a unilateral guarantee to EU residents in Britain that they could stay and retain their rights.
In Brussels, Sophie in ‘t Veld, an MEP leading the European parliament’s taskforce on citizen’s rights after Brexit, has apparently described a UK minister as a “fantasist” after he wrote to her insisting that people were being treated properly and fairly.
Lisa and Jon discuss what all of this means, and how the people she’s met and written about could reasonably say they’re not being treated either properly or fairly.