Brussel is the game changer over Brexit

[Wise]

In fact, this is a good news below for 16 million plus. When UK is still battle with the constitution crisis.






http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 05196.html

[secret.simon]

This is welcome news indeed. Mind you, it is merely a proposed amendment at this stage, but this proposal and the idea of giving all EU teenagers subsidised EURail tickets shows that the EU has started thinking about strengthening cohesion and improving its offer to citizens, as opposed to corporations and governments.

However, as usual, there are caveats.
a) It is a proposal at the committee stage of the EU Parliament. There is a reasonably good chance that the EU Commission will oppose it. The EU Commission will want to make an example of the UK, so as to discourage others from even entertaining the thought. Giving British citizens the right to retain EU citizenship gives out the wrong signal from Brussels.

Indeed, as an aside, the hardness of the Brexit will not be decided by London, but by Brussels. Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, put it bluntly that the alternative to a hard Brexit is no Brexit, with nothing else in between on the table.

b) That preserves British citizen rights in the EU, but not the other way round. That would be what concerns most people on these forums.

c) Presumably it only applies to British citizens who currently hold EU citizenship and may not apply to British citizens born after Brexit.

d) It weakens the one of the arguments in the Miller judgment, which was that Brexit will lead to loss of rights of British citizens as EU citizens and hence requires Parliament to trigger Article 50. Assuming that the proposal progresses, that is no longer the case.

[Obie]

I hope they do not proceed with such a scheme. It will be outrageous , a scandal of an enormous proportion even, if a situation exist were British citizens are allowed to hold EU citizenship whiles European citizens are murdered in the streets of England . That is a no brainer. It will cause a chaos in the system.

I will stand to benefit from such a scheme, but in the interest of the preservation of the European Union, I think it will be crazy..

I can't fathom a situation where a British citizen will be allowed to live, work and claim benefits in all EU countries, and those citizens will be barred from UK. Utterly irrational.

[Wanderer]

Suits me to honest, sorry to be selfish but i have no vested interest other than myself in this.

[secret.simon]

Plus ca change...

Before and during the referendum debate, some people posited that leaving the EU would deprive British citizens who voted to remain unfairly of their EU citizenship. And at that time, I had pointed out that the EU had the right to grant its citizenship even without reference to that of a national member-state.

Citizenship of the Union was created in 1992 by the Maastricht Treaty, at a time when the EU itself did not have a legal personality on the international stage. Therefore, citizenship of the EU had to be defined in terms of citizenship of a member-state, which existed as subjects of international law.

But the Lisbon Treaty, which essentially was a substitute for the failed EU Constitution, gave the EU a legal personality and made it an independent subject of international law, and hence it makes sense now that it can grant its own citizenship without any reference to national boundaries. It could in theory even have its own naturalisation system, just as it has its own immigration system (EU Blue Card).

Other subjects of international law who are not nation states do have their own citizenships, though it is on a much more limited cases. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (with 3 citizens) and the Holy See (which is a different legal being from the Vatican City State) are two such bodies that come to mind.

[Wise]

Indeed what a smart proposal in other to extract all talented British citizen to contribute to EU economy. There will enough fun in the up coming negotiations.

[rooibos]

Don't count your chickens before they're hatched!

[secret.simon]

Independent - An article by Charles Goeren, the author of this (EU Associate citizenship) proposal.

The European Parliament profile of Charles Goeren MEP.

BBC - Brexit: Could UK get ‘associate EU citizenship’?

A petition on the 38 degrees website asking the UKPR (UK Permanent Representative) to the EU to negotiate this with the EU.

Another discussion of the proposal.

[secret.simon]

The problems associated with associate citizenship of the EU

Fact Sheet: The rights of EU nationals in the U.K. by Colin Yeo, immigration barrister.

[ouflak1]

The problems associated with associate citizenship of the EU

"If the EU decides to amend its Treaties to allow this (Associate Citizenship) by the backdoor, this may suggest that the EU does not actually intend to allow exiting Member States a clean break under Article 50 TEU."

She makes this statement as if it is a conclusion, but she offers no arguments or axioms to lead up to this conclusion or support it, and then the rest of the article considers this a 'given'. This isn't logical. Standing alone, the statement doesn't even make sense. There are plenty of countries that offer varieties of citizenship and nationality, not too mention permanent residence, depending on all sorts of circumstances.

I'd liken 'Associate' citizenship as something equal to India's Overseas Citizenship, where people who were previously full citizens can qualify for practically all of the same benefits of full citizenship excepting the right to own certain properties and vote. But there are examples rife around the world. The UK offers Right of Abode. It is possible to be a United States national without being a United States citizen. There are agreements between other (often neighbouring) countries outside the EU that allow for mutual free movement and citizenship-like rights. Dual/multiple citizenship is common throughout the world. Many countries offer acquisition of automatic citizenship based on marriage, ancestry, military service, financial investment, etc.... Even within the EU there is the special arrangement that the Faroe Islands has with Denmark and the rest of the EU where residents can choose to be EU citizens (or not). There is absolutely nothing new or unusual about this concept, and I'd even say it's rather well established in a variety of forms.

Nobody has to claim or utilize any of these citizenships or citizenship-like privileges if they don't want to.

[secret.simon]

It is unusual and flattering for somebody to reflect on posts with thoughtful, constructive comments.

I interpreted this proposal in a slightly different manner.

Post Lisbon Treaty, the EU has most of the trappings of a Westphalian state in international law. Now it even has its own legal personality. Rather than just being a transnational (mes)alliance, it is a fully functional subject of international law in its own right. It has a foreign service, a parliament, five presidents (why have just one when five could do-OK, there are actually only two with meaningful powers), its own immigration policy (EU Blue Card), etc.

But so far, the one thing that it did not have, which a state does have, is its own nationality/citizenship. Thus far, EU citizenship is tied up by being associated with a national citizenship and not being an independent grant of citizenship. In my opinion, this proposal is the first step towards having a European citizenship independent of national citizenship. It is thus unsurprising that it is being backed by Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's Brexit negotiator, whose European federalist credentials are next to none.

Returning to your well-thought through analogies, it is indeed not dissimilar to the Indian OCI scheme, though I would suggest that there are significant differences with the US national/citizen analogy. The Nordic Union is certainly a model, an especially apposite model, given that it is a union that allows free movement between countries that used to be one, but that broke up acrimoniously. And we need not even look as far as the Faroe Islands. The residents of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man have slightly different British citizenship as compared to those of the UK, which can be altered by residence in the UK.

The question is, would the EU actually be a place worth settling in? Many people think that the UK is a terrible place after Brexit. But the EU has a chain of elections/referendums lined up in the coming one year that will dramatically alter it. Here is a short calendar

Dec 4 (next Sunday) - Austria goes to the polls to elect a Federal President and a neo-Nazi came within 30,000 votes of winning last time. Also, Italy is due to hold a referendum on constitutional reform, which may destabilise the government and in turn, the Euro. See the Independent's editorial linked to below.

March 15 - Netherlands goes to the polls and Geert Wilders Party for Freedom may win the largest no of votes, though it is highly unlikely to form a government.

April 23 and May 7 - The French go to the polls. Could Marine Le Pen become La Presidente? As an aside, that would mean that the heads-of-government of the three largest economies in the EU (UK, France and Germany) would all be female, a contrast to the other side of the pond.

Anytime between 27th August and 22nd October 2017 - The German Bundestag elections could see the rise of the right-wing AfD into national politics.

Crucially, these far-right/right-wing/populist parties do not need to win elections to influence the direction of travel. Their mere presence, now emboldened with Brexit and Trump, is enough to change the whole conversation of politics.

I thought (as I am sure most people here do) that I am quite downbeat on the European project, but I was outdone in that aspect by the Independent editorial on the Italian referendum next week.

Here is a continental perspective on the slow decline of the European dream.

Next year (2017) is the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which founded the EEC and is now the Treaty for the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Will the fiftieth anniversay be the last major annivesary of the European project?