Compte rendu in extenso des débats

Mercredi 15 janvier 2020 - Strasbourg

11.2. Mise en œuvre et suivi des dispositions sur les droits des citoyens dans l'accord de retrait (B9-0031/2020)

A szavazáshoz fűzött szóbeli indokolások

  Jackie Jones (S&D). – Madam President, I’m strongly in support of this cross-party motion for a resolution on citizens’ rights within the withdrawal agreement, and I express my commitment to supporting and fighting for EU rights in Wales, and across the UK of course, after Brexit.

A new decade may have begun, yet the old ties refuse to be broken. With good reason. The EU and UK citizens’ rights are human rights. Human rights are universal and protected not only at the EU level, but at many levels. The rule of law is a key point there. The EU has a solid record on protection of human rights. Don’t step away from this. We need the EU to step up to protect the EU and UK citizens’ rights now more than ever. Send a clear message, a resounding message, throughout Europe that this Parliament sees and hears the difficulties EU and UK citizens face without an automatic registration system. Now act to protect those rights, please.

  Antony Hook (Renew). – Madam President, three million people from the EU 27 are part of our community in the UK. They include many of our teachers, nurses, doctors and farm, care and construction workers. They are our friends and neighbours. They are some of our spouses or parents of British people. I am appalled by the bureaucratic and threatening way in which the UK Government is choosing to treat European citizens. It deeply offends British peoples’ sense of fair play.

What kind of government makes people who have lived somewhere for years, contributing to society under laws that said they always could, now ask for permission to stay? What kind of government asks them to produce documents they do not have, and gets so many applications wrong that 90% of appeals succeed, and then refuses to give them a document to prove their status? It’s the government of Boris Johnson, in power on a minority vote and leading us from four years of stagnation into disaster.

(Applause)

  Judith Bunting (Renew). – Madam President, it saddened me today in Parliament that we’ve had to pass a resolution to ensure the rights of the many EU citizens in the UK and of British citizens living abroad. Whilst I welcome that we passed this resolution, these rights should never have been put at risk by the British Government because of Brexit.

The very first thing that Theresa May should ever have done was to guarantee the rights of European citizens living in Britain. It would have been a strong negotiating position and taken away years of unnecessary stress and uncertainty. Now, we have a shoddy scheme, which depends on a PDF as a proof of settlement status, rather than any physical document or card. A PDF, we all know, can be doctored easily, so employers and landlords are, justifiably perhaps, concerned about forgery, which, once again, will lead to unfair discrimination. I hope that the British Government will listen to people’s worries about this, as well as concerns passed in the resolution today.

But British citizens are also worrying about their right to stay in European countries where they have made their homes. I would like to thank those Member States who are already offering generous terms of settlement to those UK citizens who have taken residence in their country. I urge those states who have not yet declared their intentions to do so and to make their decisions known in good time.

  John Howarth (S&D). – Madam President, the resolution makes reference to the Withdrawal Agreement as a balanced document. It is not a balanced document. If it was, we would not need to be passing the separate votes that are documented today. The reality is that European Union citizens have right to be fearful because the system in the United Kingdom that the Home Office operates is institutionally racist and institutionally xenophobic. Anyone who has ever had to deal with casework on this subject will know that. It is also a mistake to end freedom of movement. It is the greatest grab back of rights to the state from the individual since 1688. UK citizens who migrated to the European continent to make their lives see their life decisions made under one regime fundamentally altered under this regime by a decision of a minority of the British population and that is a great shame. It suggests in this resolution that these matters should be addressed before the Withdrawal Agreement is voted on. I don’t believe that that will happen so my support for that agreement is unlikely.

  Jane Brophy (Renew). – Madam President, I voted for this resolution concerning the 3.2 million citizens resident in the UK from the EU and the 1.2 million UK citizens resident in the EU.

Last year, the UK Home Office suggested that people who had not applied to formalise their status by 30 June 2021 could theoretically be deported. This has generated considerable anxiety.

This resolution stresses that Europeans living in the UK need to be issued with a physical document as proof of their right to reside. Not having physical proof has left EU citizens exposed to a massive risk of future discrimination. The upcoming European Parliament decision on whether to consent to the withdrawal agreement will depend on final assurances given by the UK on citizens’ rights. Finally, I voted for this resolution because it also encourages the 27 EU Member States to adopt measures that provide legal certainty for UK citizens in the EU.

  Barbara Ann Gibson (Renew). – Madam President, I remain absolutely convinced that the decision by the UK to leave the European Union is a huge mistake. However, if we are to leave, it is absolutely essential that the rights of EU citizens are protected, both those living in the UK and UK citizens living in other countries.

Today’s resolution on citizens’ rights, and the overwhelming support of the European Parliament, was a clear message to the UK Government that their current approach is simply not good enough. There is nothing to be gained by treating people as bargaining chips. I am personally heartbroken and heartbroken for our country that we will leave the EU, but I was pleased to vote for a resolution that safeguards the rights of citizens in this process.

  Claire Fox (NI). – Madam President, I voted against this resolution because, whilst I constantly have argued since the referendum in 2016 that those EU citizens who wish to live in the UK should have their rights guaranteed and criticised the Tory government for not doing so, they should be offered settled status, this motion criticises the government for the wrong reasons and says the process should be put down as declaratory, which obviously puts the burden of proof on the government, not citizens, and is ridiculous. This deprives a nationally sovereign government of having control over monitoring what happens in its own borders. I also think this motion has been politicised churlishly by including within it the idea that freedom of movement is a great tragic loss for the UK because to note this just spits in the eye of those who have explicitly voted to leave the European Union with one key issue being freedom of movement. Not wanting freedom of movement is not about being xenophobic, it is not about hostility to people from European countries moving to or working in the UK. That is divisive scaremongering. It is about control of borders. That is a key part of sovereignty and the decisions about which citizens have both full rights and full duties and many people become British citizens from European countries because they want to enjoy those rights and duties, and I welcome them as friends and allies.

  Stanislav Polčák (PPE). – Paní předsedající, já musím říci, že lituji, že Britové odcházejí z našeho společenství. Mohli jsme být silnější, možná, že některé jiné státy se radují – Rusko a další velmoci světové politiky. Na druhou stranu, přivítal jsem, že je učiněna dohoda s Británií a takovýto odchod považuji za daleko lepší řešení. Ta dohoda, jak se říká v návrhu usnesení, je spravedlivá a vyvážená. Já mám za to, že práva občanů v přechodném období budou touto dohodou pokryta. Pokud jde o budoucí období, u toho bych se rád zastavil. Je důležité říci, že v dohodě se deklaruje závazek řešit i toto budoucí období spravedlivě, vyváženě. Je to bohužel pouze deklaratorní závazek a je důležité, abychom pamatovali na práva občanů EU na britských ostrovech i v tom budoucím období, která zatím pokryta nejsou. Já bych byl rád, kdybychom pamatovali i na Skoty, na obyvatele Severního Irska, ale to už je asi daleko složitější. Každopádně je dobré, že bylo dosaženo dohody a s ohledem na výše uvedené jsem podpořil tento návrh usnesení.

  Martina Anderson (GUE/NGL). – Madam President, before 31 January 2020, when I will be kicked out of the EU against the democratically expressed wishes of the people in the north of Ireland who voted to remain, I want to take this opportunity to thank the MEPs who voted for this resolution today and for your steadfast support for the Good Friday Agreement and all of its parts.

This resolution deals, importantly, with the rights of Irish citizens in the north of Ireland to enjoy access and exercise our EU rights where we reside. As part of last week’s Stormont deal to establish the Executive, the British Government committed to change its immigration rules. Irish citizens born in the north will now be able to exercise their EU family reunification rights, addressing the Emma DeSouza case.

However, Britain did not get the name ‘Perfidious Albion’ for nothing. They still deny Emma, and all of us born in the north of Ireland, Irish citizenship. My final warning to my fellow MEPs is this: beware of Perfidious Albion, a country you cannot trust that never keeps its word. Britannia will always, always, waive the rules.

  Mick Wallace (GUE/NGL). – Madam President, clearly the rights of over 3 million EU citizens in the UK and over 1 million UK nationals in EU countries must be safeguarded and adequately monitored by the Commission and the proposed UK independent national authority. Obviously, those rights provided for under the Good Friday Agreement must also be safeguarded.

We should also acknowledge the threat to the rights of all EU and UK citizens by the neoliberal ideology of the EU. The EU’s cap on national borrowing, as laid out in the Stability and Growth Pact and the Fiscal Compact, is a grinding austerity policy that has completely undermined rights to education, food, health and housing, as well as rights to decent work, fair wages and social security. In Ireland, even if we had a government with the mindset to tackle our terrible housing crisis – which we don’t have at the moment, they would be hampered by the fiscal rules. Likewise, our road infrastructure has been built not by the state but by public-private partnerships (PPPs), costing twenty times the money that it would cost if the state were allowed to borrow it itself. But, sadly, the EU feeds the private sector with its policies.

  Clare Daly (GUE/NGL). – Madam President, I have to say I will miss both our colleagues here from Sinn Féin, Martina, but also the colleagues from the Brexit Party. I think the place is going to be poorer for all of their absence.

But I supported this motion simply from the point of view of protecting the provisions and the citizens’ rights enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement. We’ve had our Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Boris Johnson celebrating the resumption of the Northern Ireland Assembly and telling us that the Good Friday Agreement is now back working again. I suppose the point I want to make is that if the Good Friday Agreement is working then what that means is that all of the people of Northern Ireland have to continue to have a birth right to identify themselves to be accepted as Irish or British or both as they choose and as set out in that Good Friday Agreement. Irish people living in Northern Ireland who haven’t sought British citizenship cannot and should not have that citizenship foisted upon them.

  Ilhan Kyuchyuk (Renew). – Madam President, two—and—a—half weeks prior to Brexit, we need to examine the implementation of citizens’ rights in the UK withdrawal agreement, because there’s a sense of uncertainty for millions of EU citizens – especially for those applying for ‘settled’ status. There are many unquantified issues on how the rights of both the remaining 27 Member States in the UK and UK citizens in the EU could be applied after the withdrawal. The EU 27 citizens, for instance, should – as a matter of urgency – be provided with proof of their rights to reside in the UK after the end of the transition period, and the British Government needs to stop creating anxiety and threatening EU citizens with deportation. These announcements are not productive and only generate additional turmoil. Prime Minister Johnson wants to agree on a positive future relationship by the end of December 2020 based on an ambitious free—trade agreement, but he has to know that the level of free movement granted for EU citizens after Brexit would be a key factor in deciding the degree of future cooperation.

  Juan Fernando López Aguilar (S&D). – Señora presidenta, después de años de negociaciones agónicas hemos votado la posición del Parlamento Europeo para proteger los derechos de los ciudadanos después de la retirada del Reino Unido.

Lo hemos hecho con tristeza, porque vamos a echar de menos a nuestros amigos británicos europeístas, pero no vamos a echar de menos a los escaños del nacionalpopulismo supremacista y reaccionario que han provocado el Brexit.

Pero el mensaje es claro: reciprocidad. La Unión Europea tratará a los británicos que residen en Europa dependiendo del modo en que el Reino Unido trate a los europeos establecidos en el Reino Unido. Y esto lo digo pensando en los británicos ⸻treinta mil⸻ que residen en Canarias, al mismo tiempo que en los trabajadores que en España cruzan la verja hacia Gibraltar ⸻diez mil cada día⸻, manteniendo la dignidad del trabajo en un rincón donde ondea la bandera británica.

Pero lo que me importa subrayar es que hay todavía mucho trabajo por hacer para asegurar lo que no está claro y deberá ser despejado: la participación del Reino Unido en la libre circulación, la política de asilo y refugio, la cooperación policial y judicial contra el crimen y la garantía de la seguridad, tanto de los británicos como de los europeos, frente a amenazas que compartimos.

  Daniel Hannan (ECR). – Madam President, a lot of this debate seems to have taken place in a parallel universe, one that barely intersects with the reality of what’s happening.

I was a regular and repeated critic of Theresa May’s grudging attitude and her slowness in recognising the rights of settled EU nationals. But the system is now up and running and is working far better than the reciprocal systems of any Member State that I can think of among the 27.

It’s simply not true that people are denied – there’s no mechanism to deny people status. They can be asked for more proof. But all of these urban myths that we keep hearing – some of which came to me as a constituency MEP, and when I looked into them, they turned out not to be as they first appeared – are serving to unsettle and alarm our friends and neighbours from EU Member States.

When I hear my Liberal Democrat colleagues in particular demanding written forms, or physical forms of ID, when they oppose ID cards as a party, and when I hear them criticising the UK Government without a word of criticism for Member States that have failed to reciprocate, I have to wonder what their motives really are.

  Martin Horwood (Renew). – Madam President, can I enlarge on my vote just now for this Parliament’s resolution on the British Withdrawal Agreement, including its frank criticism of the UK’s inadequate and arbitrary settled status scheme, which is already unfairly treating our EU 27 friends, neighbours, colleagues and family members in the UK. And can I pay tribute to Guy Verhofstadt, who has won many fans in the UK for his relentless focus on citizens’ rights during this process – including those of Brits in the remaining EU Member States.

In paragraph 20, the resolution recognises the many UK citizens who don’t want to lose their European citizens’ rights, and calls for this lost to be mitigated. This could mean associate individual EU citizenship, which I would strongly support. If the idea of international citizens’ rights for foreign nationals seems odd, there is a successful example – and it’s Britain. We have conferred citizens’ rights on Irish citizens in Northern Ireland and across the UK, and give other citizens’ rights – including voting rights – to citizens of Malta, Cyprus and other Commonwealth countries. So it can be done, and it would prevent this unique deprivation of rights from existing European citizens.

  Jiří Pospíšil (PPE). – Paní předsedající, já jsem podpořil dnešní usnesení, považuji to dnešní hlasování za mimořádně důležité. Dali jsme tím jasný politický signál, že v rámci uspořádání po brexitu jsou pro nás práva občanů zemí EU, kteří žijí na půdě Velké Británie, mimořádně důležitá. Je to silné politikum a do budoucna, až budeme řešit jejich konečnou podobu, tak je třeba říci, že vedle ekonomické spolupráce a výhod je zachování volného pohybu osob a hlavně občanů zemí EU žijících ve Velké Británii jasnou politickou prioritou. Já jsem z České republiky, 35 000 Čechů žije dnes trvale ve Velké Británii a pro nás je jaksi politickou nutností vyjednat v konečné fázi takové podmínky, aby tito lidé mohli důstojně dále žít na půdě Velké Británie. Takže děkuji za ten dnešní apel a rád jsem jej podpořil.

  Matthew Patten (NI). – Madam President, I voted against the resolution on the Withdrawal Agreement for two really basic reasons. The first is that it was hypercritical of the UK in terms of the processes that it has put in place in terms of welcoming our friends who want to settle in the UK. But, in fact, the UK is way ahead of the other 27 Member States. It’s really important that rights are reciprocated for UK citizens and this resolution didn’t reflect that.

The second thing is that this resolution, in its debate and proposal in terms of freedom of movement, completely ignores the referendum that we had in 2016. The ability for the UK to control its own borders is absolutely central to Brexit, and this resolution completely fails to recognise that fact. In fact, this resolution is really just a very naked ploy to sabotage the Brexit vote that we have in Brussels at the end of this month, where the Withdrawal Agreement will be decided – its final fate decided – by you, my colleagues, the MEPs here. That’s why I voted against this resolution.

  Neena Gill (S&D). – Madam President, I voted for this resolution on implementing citizens’ rights in the Withdrawal Agreement. I believe it gives clarity as to what happens in transition and what happens afterwards. As we’ve already heard, there are 3.5 million EU citizens in the UK who each have their own personal stories and situations, but they have one thing in common: they want to ensure a safe future for themselves and their families.

The UK Government has done everything possible to make things difficult. It has failed to provide a system that gives them full guarantees, or physical documents that would enable them to prove their status to prospective employers or landlords. Now this is a huge concern in my constituency of the West Midlands, and this is not hearsay. I have case-work that proves some of the awful experiences that EU citizens have had, and we forget that the EU migrants contribute GBP 2 300 more to the UK Exchequer than the average adult.

But what is truly shocking is that the UK Government doesn’t seem to be as concerned about the plight of 1.2 million UK citizens living in the EU as the EU is about protecting its citizens’ rights. I hope that for those who are in this position, the Labour MEPs will continue to stand up for their rights until the very end.