Day to day on Symi

Worried about your status in Europe?

Worried about your status in Europe?

I saw this post on Facebook today, from a place called British In Europe. As far as I know, it’s accurate, and it explains our position. We being British citizens in Europe who could be put at risk because of the Con government in the yUK and so on. If you’re worried about your status, as many of us are, this (para 4) may help allay some fears. (As for para 5, Greece has already put into law protection for us who are properly registered here. This, of course, could change, but then so could any and everything.) I have no reason to assume it’s not accurate as the group/page British In Europe seems to know what it’s talking about. I quote:

2019-12-19

The media is not helping us at the moment by using interchangeable terms for things that are quite separate. So:

  1. This week Johnson is bringing to Parliament the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill, and will use his majority to pass it at second reading before the recess. It’s in this bill that he intends to insert a clause barring an extension to the Withdrawal Agreement’s transition period. BUT
  2. This is NOT the same thing as the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) itself. The Withdrawal Agreement has already been approved by the European Council and cannot now be amended without further negotiation (which ain’t going to happen). The WA contains an article (Article 132) allowing an extension of 1 or 2 years to the transition period if it’s requested by July 2020. Clause 132 will remain in the WA even if Johnson’s bill passes with his proposed amendment barring an extension, which means that the UK government could change its mind on extending the transition period at any point up to July 2020, just by passing a new bit of legislation.
  3. The media is now using the term ‘deal’ to relate to the trade deal that has to be struck during the extension, and the terms ‘no deal’ and ‘crashing out’ to the situation where no trade deal can be agreed. Confusingly, these are the very same terms that they used to denote the UK leaving without a Withdrawal Agreement, but the meaning is very different.
  4. As I hope you all know by now, once the Withdrawal Agreement becomes law – expected on 31 January 2020 – then our future rights that are contained within it are guaranteed whatever happens with the future trade deal. So a failure to conclude a trade deal might be a ‘no deal’ situation for the UK, but not for us. We can’t say this enough, as it’s important and the subject of much confusion and concern.
  5. Once the WA becomes law, the ‘no deal’ legislation already passed in each of the EU27 countries becomes defunct, and we then have to wait for each country to publish details of how it intends to implement the WA for its British residents.

If you’ve already made sense of this, then apologies for repeating myself … but I know from comments that lots of people are still confused (not helped by the media!).

And breathe …