Paris Gourtsoyannis: Offer on citizens will leave EU cold

Theresa Mays efforts to earn the trust of EU leaders ahead of Brexit negotiations seriously backfired. Picture: Getty Images

On Sunday there was a reminder, if any was needed, of just how shallow the cultural understanding is between the two sides that began Brexit negotiations last week.

Asked what he thought of his opposite number, Brexit Secretary David Davis offered this piercing insight on EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier: “He’s very French.”

With the curtain of national stereotypes drawn between Britain and Europe being quite so thick, it shouldn’t be any surprise that UK ministers and officials have struggled to predict or understand just how their EU counterparts are going to react to things.

That has serious implications for the next 18 months of talks, and is being played out in the early stages in discussions about the fate of EU citizens in the UK and Brits in Europe.

Facing the assembled leaders of 27 EU governments over dinner last week, Theresa May thought it was worthwhile to paint the broad brushstrokes of what Downing Street called its “big and generous offer” on EU citizens’ rights.

The Prime Minister thought that by setting out her plans directly to EU leaders ahead of the full detail of the proposal, published by the Home Office yesterday, she would ease their fears and earn their trust.

And she believed that making a commitment not to deport any EU nationals and promising that no families would be split up would show goodwill and humanity.

That isn’t how they saw it. Her fellow heads of government don’t want their European summits to be bogged down with Brexit detail – which is why they contracted out negotiations to Mr Barnier in the first place.

They didn’t understand why the subject would be broached before the detail was available. Was there something to hide, they wondered – and why do we have to wait to find out?

And by mentioning deportations and family breakups at all, Mrs May only reminded her fellow leaders of the high personal stakes for their citizens. Her 27 dining companions reportedly left the meeting muttering about the dismal depths Brexit was plumbing.

Now the government has set out its generous offer in full, and hopes some technocratic detail will cheer them up.

Broadly speaking, in substance the two sides are very close together on citizens’ rights. The only area where there’s clear disagreement is over who will guarantee them.

The EU insists that only the European Court of Justice can defend the rights of European nationals, while the UK government says the ECJ’s jurisdiction must end after Brexit.

Even on this, a shibboleth of arch-Eurocrats and Brexiteers alike, there is the hint of a compromise. Mr Davis says he is open to the idea of a multinational judicial panel, made up of a representative from the UK and the EU, plus a neutral chair, to preside over disputes on citizenship. A commitment to enshrine the post-Brexit legal status of EU citizens in international law also points in that direction.

But already, the early verdict from the EU: needs more work. Outside the cabinet room, it isn’t hard to see why.

The claim from Mr Davis that the UK’s offer grants EU citizens “effectively the same rights as British citizens” doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. They won’t even have the same rights they have now.

Any EU citizen can currently bring dependent family members to the UK without restriction. After Brexit, that will be lost and income requirements will be applied.

Right now, they can export child benefit to their home country. Unless they are doing so on Brexit day, they’ll lose that right, and if they give it up in future, they won’t get it back.

EU nationals who are based in the UK but posted overseas for work can still have a life and home here. In future, if they leave for more than two years, the door is closed, no matter how long they have lived in Britain previously.

Crucially, for EU citizens who secure permanent rights in the UK after Brexit, accessing the public services will require not just an identity check, as now, but an immigration check as well, probably involving a biometric ID card connected to a Home Office database.

Having to carry papers that locals don’t need in order to go to the doctor, rent a flat or apply for a job isn’t equal treatment, it’s second class status. It certainly doesn’t meet the definition of EU citizenship as established by the Maastricht Treaty – a living principle rather than a set of entitlements.

Beyond the principle is the practice. Consider this: the UK government has spent the past year taking £65 from people desperate for reassurance that their lives won’t be turned upside down by Brexit.

They have been asked to submit reams of documents accounting for their employment, address and travel for at least the last five years.

Thousands of them have had their applications rejected on questionable grounds and after lengthy delays as the Home Office has slowly drowned in its own paperwork.

They have been sent letters asking them to “make preparations to leave” despite there being no legal obligation to do so, and some have done as they were instructed.

It has also taken their passports, often for long periods and with terrible consequences. The Glasgow East MP David Linden raised a case in the past few days of a family forced to turn to a foodbank when their benefits were stopped by the Department for Work and Pensions – because their passports are with the Home Office.

Now, everyone who has put themselves through that process, no matter what the outcome, has been told they have to apply and pay again.

It doesn’t inspire confidence that the system will be fairly or competently managed. EU officials examining the process and EU governments hearing the individual stories through embassies will be aghast.

So are the people who have to go through it. Like so much about these negotiations, the generosity will be lost in translation.