Welcome to Brussels
Three days after the beginning of the Brexit negotiations #MrsMe turned up for the EU Council meeting to mark the end of Malta's six months in the rotating presidential chair. And she brought a proposal on what the EU call "citizens' rights" and the UK press call "arrangements for EU migrants in the UK and UK expatriates in the EU" or some such clumsy formulation. They're all expats, they're all migrants, and at present they're all citizens, which is really the point.
Ten minutes were allocated late on Thursday for #MrsMe to make her presentation, then out she went so they could discuss Brexit. As has been said at least once already, Council meetings are not going to engage in negotiation - there's a dedicated forum for that.
Does this look like a party emerging after a successful day?
The press conferences gave a hint of what people were thinking. At the UK event #MrsMe told us all about her "fair and serious offer" (at least she dropped the "generous" label; telling people how generous you're being to them doesn't look good). The presidential conference tried to deal with all the important things the Council was supposed to be about - terrorism, transfer of medical and banking regulators out of London - but all the questions were about Brexit.
European leaders agree on process to remove HQs of the European Medicines Agency & Banking Authority from the U.K. https://t.co/pKdUDfIOPa— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) June 22, 2017
Jean-Claude Juncker judged it "a first step but... not sufficient". Donald Tusk's words were "below our expectations" and it "risks worsening the position of citizens". Separately, Angela Merkel called it a "good start". BBC News repeatedly expressed surprise at such an ungrateful response. Jo Coburn on BBC2's Daily Politics observed that we hadn't yet seen anything from the other side and had to be corrected - a detailed proposal was published on 12 June. If the BBC was unaware of it that was nobody's fault but their own.
By the standards of British immigration policy, particularly over the May years, her "offer" could certainly be called generous, right down to the promise of an easy application process (we'll believe that when we see it), but the fact remains, she wants to take rights away from people, while the EU can keep the high ground - they're trying to preserve the rights of both sets of citizens. Somebody will have to move.
The proposal was discussed well in this thread of tweets, and summarised as "If you have right of permanent residence you keep it. If you don't, you can apply":
This "generous" offer to EU cits is close to the minimum of what UK would likely be required to do by international law. 1/ https://t.co/sofkxH10wn— Simon Cox (@SimonFRCox) June 23, 2017
It seems unlikely that the detail of the UK plan has been held back so that it can be announced first to the Commons, as is "correct" (early release of information is a frequent cause for complaint by Speaker Bercow). So is the proposal not yet finished, or don't our Brexit team care how much negotiating time they waste, or can't they count?
At one point #MrsMe came up with the bright idea that the subject of expats' rights would be "one of the first things" the talks would cover. As if that was all a UK initiative. As if the EU27 don't care about it. As if it isn't one of the top three topics which have to be progressed far enough before negotiator Barnier will even be allowed to mention a future UK-EU relationship. And as if the talks hadn't already started.
Many people on all sides have proposed throughout the last year that we should make an early unilateral declaration that "EU migrants' rights will be protected" in the full expectation that it would be matched by the other side. Late to this particular party is the London Evening Standard, under the direction of George Osborne: "The Government should announce unilaterally that any Europeans who are living here will be able to remain here, work here, pay taxes here and use the public services they help pay for. You wouldn’t need any complicated reciprocal agreement with Europe, or provide any role for the European Court of Justice."
There's one problem with this approach: what rights do you protect? Full EU citizenship rights, such as bringing in a spouse of non-EU citizenship and recourse to the ECJ, or the limited set that was proposed today? It would become a subject of negotiation whatever you hoped for. You couldn't close it down by speaking first, because it would all have to be the subject of international agreement.
Don't forget why we're doing all this
Most Leavers think *their* reasons for Brexit have widespread support. ( @CambridgeNewsUK yesterday) pic.twitter.com/GVWhl14sV1— Simon Cox (@SimonFRCox) June 22, 2017
The Article 50 process
Days between 29 March 2017 and 29 March 2019, with six months reserved at the end for approving whatever treaties and agreements come out of the process (before talks continue on trade relationships etc).
