After Brexit, can we restore the right to live, work and retire in Europe?
Sadly, I do not have a holiday or retirement home on the Continent. Nor do I own any pets. So I should be able to look with equanimity upon 2021, as we roll the clock back a few decades to when being a property owner in the warmer southern climes of Europe was something only the rich did.
In those days, dogs had to be packed off to special kennels unless there was some student or impecunious friend who would come in and pet-sit. Now, two million dogs and cats have used the Channel Tunnel since Passports for Pets were introduced by the Labour government in 2000 – one of its more popular measures.
Before the coronavirus there were 73 million of us who used Ryanair or easyJet to visit European cities for short trips without having to worry about visa or health insurance. And instead of the foreign holiday being a once-a-year affair, there are now up to two million Brits who have a place in Europe – like a small time-share apartment in an urbanizacion on a Spanish costa or the Algarve, where the Daily Mail and the Sun are on sale every morning and cheery English expats serve up full Monty breakfasts in caffs in the morning. In the afternoon litres of lager are served along with premier league football in imitation English pubs.
Just as steelworkers in Pittsburgh or autoworkers in Detroit bought a small apartment or house in Florida or the Carolinas to escape for a while the bitter winter cold on industrial north America and then retired to the south, so too have hundreds of thousands of Brits used their savings to buy a second home in France, Spain, Italy, Greece and anywhere in Europe that took their fancy. Some sold up completely in Britain to start a new life as permanent residents in Spain, Italy or France.
Others retired to the warmer climates, secure in the knowledge that medical bills and social security would be covered. UK driving licences had the friendly little EU yellow stars on blue so anyone could drive freely, as if they still lived in Britain.
Britain’s post-war Foreign Secretary, Ernie Bevin, defined his foreign policy as “Going to Victoria Station and buying a ticket to where I damn well please.”
It took a few decades for that policy to come to life. But for the last 30 years, since Margaret Thatcher pushed through her Single Market project, which covered far more than trade, Brits have been able to live, work, and retire in Europe as freely as anywhere in the UK.
Now all that is coming to an end. Travel will still be possible though the European Commission is mulling bringing in an ESTA-style computer delivered visa — which will be OK for most of us, though a bore to renew it every two years. But it might not be great for older people who are not all computer savvy.
Then there are 10 million Brits with criminal convictions – a few big, most small. If the EU border police computers are sensitive, especially to anyone connected to the kind of radical politics which is burning up France, Germany and Austria, then there will be problems.
Medical insurance will have to be taken out for every trip, as the Government is abolishing the European Health Identity Card. Trips to Europe, as is the norm for all third country citizens will be limited to 90 days in every 180. Going to open up a second home at Easter will mean coming back in July until the next trip in October.
We will have to stand in passport queues with Chinese or Indian tourists and show proof of a return ticket and sufficient income to cover our stays. There are cumbersome vaccination requirements for our pooches. The Spanish are insisting the 800,000 Brits with a place in Spain get a Spanish driver’s licence. The forms are all in Spanish and, despite owning homes in Spain, not every expat Brit has learnt the language.
For years there was a struggle to get British ski instructors accepted as ski teachers in French reports. The Single Market allowed that to happen but now the Government has withdrawn from a common set of rules about European ski-teaching standards, as part of the obsession with being a sovereign independent nation and never taking the knee to any dastardly EU regulations. So some 2,000 British ski teachers in the French Alps face coming home to teach on dry ski slopes in Warrington.
A few have obtained a European passport. The Paris-based British writer, Peter Gumbel, has written a short but moving book, Citizens of Everywhere (Haus Books) about how his Jewish grandparents who fled Nazi Germany have allowed him to keep his EU rights, as he has taken out German citizenship.
That option is open to British citizens in Northern Ireland who can automatically have Irish citizenship – retaining ease of travel and right to residence in the rest of Europe.
The question of travel and residence have not been part of the current negotiations, but surely will need to be looked at again in a year or two when the present furore dies down. The Swiss and Norwegians, both outside the EU, have obtained the rights to live, retire, travel, and work for their citizens anywhere in Europe. A sensible British Government will surely seek no less for its own people. But is the present Government sensible?
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