I refer to this petition: Permanent European Union Citizenship.
Main objectives
EU citizens elect the European Parliament and participate in its work, thus exercising treaty rights, enhancing Union democracy, and reinforcing its citizenship. Noting the ECJ’s view of Union citizenship as a ‘fundamental status’ of nationals of Member States, and that Brexit will strip millions of EU citizens of this status and their vote in European elections, requests the Commission propose means to avoid risk of collective loss of EU citizenship and rights, and assure all EU citizens that, once attained, such status is permanent and their rights acquired.
This petition runs under the aegis of a European Union scheme called The European Citizens’ Initiative. As Wikipedia says,
The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) is a European Union mechanism aimed at increasing direct democracy by enabling “EU citizens to participate directly in the development of EU policies”, introduced with the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007. The initiative enables one million citizens of the European Union, who are nationals of at least one quarter of the member states, to call directly on the European Commission to propose a legal act in an area where the Member States have conferred powers onto the EU level.
In other words, like its British equivalent, a petition will be considered if it crosses a certain threshold. Not enacted into law, obviously – don’t hold your breath waiting for any government to give up that monopoly – but it will have passed the first milestone on the long road to becoming law. The EU scheme does seem a tad more meaningful than the UK one.
Turning to this specific petition, I do not see anything that I, as someone who happily voted Leave, should object to. The petition does not seek to stop the United Kingdom from leaving the control of the European Union. If this became law it would mean that Remainers currently angry at losing their automatic right to work in the EU and their vote in EU elections would not lose out from Brexit at all. Although on every website on which I have seen this petition promoted everyone seems to assume that it will be opposed by Leavers, my instinct is to say “A solution that leaves both sides happy – Great!”
I do have some qualms about voting to change the character of the EU when I don’t want to be part of the it. I also worry that I may have missed some Trojan Horse in the wording of the petition. It worries me that so many supporters of this petition seem to think of it as part of their campaign against Brexit. It looks to me as if it would help reconcile many people to Brexit by removing the aspects of Brexit that they most disliked, but have all those die-hard Remainers seen something I missed?
I should say that I think the chance of this petition cutting much ice with the EU are remote. Its supporters in the UK may not have spotted that it makes Brexit less painful and hence more likely, and more likely to be imitated, but the officials and politicians of the EU are not so naive. This proposal would allow a British person an unrestricted right to work in the 27 remaining countries of the EU, but would not allow citizens of the 27 an unrestricted right to work in the UK. Ain’t gonna happen. However I have signed many a petition that had very little chance of passing.
What do you think? Brits and other current EU citizens, will you sign it? UK citizens, if by some strange concatenation of events this became EU law, would you take up the offer of keeping your EU citizenship?
“You’re an EU citizen forever, and you can never leave.”
Oh yes it does.
Any citizen of the United Kingdom is now an EU citizen, and therefore retains any rights that person has under EU law, regardless of UK law. Those rights would include enforcement by the EU of protections or privileges established under EU authority against interference by the UK government. This could include the right to be protected against “hate speech” or discrimination by other British citizens.
So this petition is a huge Trojan Horse, smuggling in the EU’s authority.
My understanding of the EU Parliament is that is nothing more than window dressing designed to fool the sheeple into thinking that they live in a democracy. A hugely expensive talking shop and gravy train with no actual powers. All the actual decisions are then made by people who were never elected by anyone but appointed by each other. Losing the right to vote in these circumstances hardly seems to be much of an inconvenience.
Rich Rostrum has it right, it is a pretext for keeping the European Court of Justice as a overseeing Court to mould UK law and hamper a departed UK’s government, easier than resorting to military intervention to protect EU citizens rights.
It reminds me that in the Scottish independence referendum debate, not once did I hear, nor could I find, any reference to Scots gaining ‘Scottish’ citizenship or losing British citizenship on independence, or how citizenship would be decided.
Stonyground is absolutely spot on too, and I think Chad is on the money.
Rich Rostrom writes, “Those rights would include enforcement by the EU of protections or privileges established under EU authority against interference by the UK government.”
How would the EU enforce such rights for British-EU citizens inside the UK? Does any modern liberal democratic country try to enforce the demand that its citizens living in other countries should be treated according to its own laws? I thought that died out with the foreign-administered Concessions in Qing-era China The US government does not guarantee the First Amendment or Second Amendment rights of American expatriates.
It can enforce the rights or obligations of EU law on UK/EU citizens living in the EU all it likes. Presumably that’s what these people wanted.
Could it give the EU many ways to wage lawfare against British people visiting an EU country? Suppose you go to Belgium and are there arrested for speech hateful to the EU that you uttered in the UK (or typed into this blog, perhaps). Your inalienable right to be a citizen of the EU till you die would be their inalienable right to arrest you for what you said in the UK, and to deny you UK consular protection since you were being arrested in your capacity as an EU citizen, not as a UK citizen.
For me, the giveaway of this being a con is the emphasis on collective rights. This is not about an individual choosing to be a dual citizen of the EU and UK. This is about the the UK population as a whole remaining EU citizens whether any individuals among them like it or not.
Try suggesting to the group that want this that they instead petition the EU to make dual EU-UK citizenship easy for those individuals who request it. 🙂
Just checked my passport. It says British Citizen not EU citizen or Union citizen.
Dictionary: citizen – native or naturalized member of a state or nation who owes allegiance to its government and is entitled to its protection.
The EU is not a State nor a nation… pretending it is does not count, nor does insisting it has citizens. And although it is the end-game of The European Project, the EU does not have a Government.
The EU is all about pretence… let’s pretend Europe is a Country.
People are citizens of the Member States of the EU.
Anyway it is the European Commission which promulgates law, exercises treaty rights, etc, the EU Parliament is just what our American cousins call a hood ornament.
Of course it’s a Trojan Horse. It won’t do the job by itself, but let this through Parliament and you’d find several more coming along, plus a later few court cases to ‘clarify’ the interpretations, and eventually you’ll have Britain back into the EU by stealth.
No remainer ever gave a stuff about voting for the EU Parliament.
I would not sign it on principle, I am a Subject of the Queen’s Majesty, not a citizen. The EU is the second most corrupt organisation that I can think of, the UN being in first place! Also, the EU is not a democratic organisation and was designed with that as the end game, totalitarian system, non democratic, protectionist ruled by a small number of unelected, and unelectable, crooks.
I want the EU utterly destroyed and its main hierarchy hanged for treason against their various nations. The petition is toilet paper and a fatuous distraction from the real business of not just leaving but actively destroying the EU and ALL its agents.
There is also this issue: In a post-Brexit Britain, you would now have two classes: The remainers, who retain their EU citizenship and can appeal to a parallel EU government, and those who voted leave, who have ‘only’ British citizenship. Which one do you think will end up more important? Which government will end up dominant within post-Brexit Britain?
You could end up second-class citizens to the international new-class.
It seems pretty obvious that both your own government, and the EU, have no intention of letting you go.
I am variously agreed against voting at all in this ‘petition’, with several commenters above. In particular:
Rich Rostrom:
Mr Ed:
Niall Kilmartin:
John B:
Hector Drummond, Vile Novelist:
As an alternative for Remainers, decently attractive I hope, why don’t they that wish, emigrate (at least their principal residence, within the next 7 months) to one of the 27 post-Brexit EU statelets, hang in there for as long as it takes, and then apply for citizenship in their chosen statelet? Then, should they wish, they could return to the UK using their (retained) dual citizenship. As far as I can see, they lose nothing long-term; in the shorter term they substitute the (I’m being entirely serious here) undoubtedly somewhat different but also worthy delights of their chosen EU27-statelet. If, after 5+ years (or whatever it takes for that second citizenship) the UK has plummeted into serious economic disadvantage, they don’t need to come back here at all, or they could come back on doubtlessly advantageous terms (though no different from the rest of the world) to help sort out all of us – whilst lecturing us (without end, if they so choose) that it is all our own fault.
In the meantime, they will be too busy establishing new homes, new jobs, 2nd/3rd language acquisition, etc – to trouble us much at all with their whinging and whining. As with the modern gainfully unemployed, without taxpayers to fund (through welfare) their unproductive lives, they would have to work at something to eat and otherwise live, making them too busy (and too tired) for much of that whinging and whining.
Best regards
Gosh. IMHO (U.S., no dog in THIS fight)
GB exit from EU has been settled. All that remains is sweeping up the protest posters, and slaping the “remainders” around a bit ’til they overcome their denial, and come to their senses.
There will be NO EU “faction” of GB’s citizenry. (In fact I recommend denial of any “dual citizenship” in such matters)
You have no standing to endorse such a “petition” as you are no longer destined to be a legitimate
“democratic ” (bwa ha ha ha ha ha) participant in EU affairs.
ZERO recognition
Pro tip: Do NOT acknowledge (e.g.)”the church” in the “blessing”, or crowning, of The King.
Do NOT even let them stand on the same podium, or anywhere ELSE other than with the rest of the hoi polloi
onlookers.
Granted, this MAY be deemed disrespectful.
Why… yes, yes it will.
I understand your argument, Natalie, but I’m with Rich. Moreover, I don’t want any citizenship that I can’t renounce. “Such status is permanent”. The implication, in the context of Brexit, is that it can’t be removed against your will (“means to avoid risk of collective loss of EU citizenship and rights”), but what it says is that it can’t be removed at all. No thanks.
This is probably written on a “cow chip” in horse urine, sure to fade and decompose.
Yet, should we ask some historian (such as Simon Shama): “What IS a Citizen?”
For these concepts of “membership,” is Citizenship a bundle of rights (and are those derivative or innate?); or is it a class of obligations (from whence and for what imposed – by whom?).
You COULD ask Simon Schama. But for some reason that I can’t quite put my finger on , I suspect he couldn’t be relied upon to be entirely honest and disinterested in any definition he might give. Just a hunch.
Well, accuse me of kibbitzing from the sidelines, but I think the comments above have it exactly right. (Although it seems to me that Nigel’s concluding paragraph allows way too much opportunity for slippage, his summary of points made prior to his comment is excellent.)
Go Brits! :>)
Russia has repeatedly asserted that protecting the “rights” of ethnic Russians in its “near abroad” justified invasion. So too did Germany. If we are to remain EU citizens, to whom the EU owes a duty of “protection”, what will it do when the UK refuses to acknowledge “rights” that the EU asserts we have?
Maybe not war, but nothing good can come of this.
Eh, no more than a UK citizen traveling to the US (or any other country) is going to force the US to recognize *UK* derived rights and privileges.
The EU can certainly try to prosecute someone for a ‘hate crime’ against an EU citizen, but outside of EU territory, how are they going to get that country to cooperate with the prosecution?
OTOH, the US just waits until the poor bastard takes a trip into or flies through the US and snatches them off the plane . . . and the UK allows that to happen.
At first, I couldn’t believe that the quoted paragraph could be the entire petition body. I assumed there was some carefully-written document underlying this summary.
Nope. This summary paragraph is the entire petition.
Having carefully reviewed the language used, I believe it can be further summarized as follows:
“If you help us to stop Brexit, we’ll be your loyal subjects forever.”
Having a foreign (and largely bogus) “citizenship” forced on me against my will and without my agreement or any consultation at all, is one of my many gripes against the vicious spiteful vindictive power-grabbing proto-empire that is the EU.
So no, I will not be signing the petition, which is – as others have said – merely another way to deny or emasculate the democratic will of the British people.
Dual citizenship, divided loyalties, what could possibly go wrong?
Think of all the patronage to control in the EU Citizens’ Commission. And the passport contracts…
Would their be a special tax after Brexit so that those who wish to keep their EU citizenship can continue to pay contributions into the EU’s coffers?
I am perfectly ok with that.
Natalie Solent (Essex) @ August 27, 2018 at 7:49 am:
Good point. But… Expatriates have voluntarily left the jurisdiction of the home country. When a territory secedes from a jurisdiction, people in that territory lose the protection of that jurisdiction, without any positive action on their part, and even over their vehement objection.
Consider a person who was born in the UK and also in the EU, and has never left the UK. This person relies on rights or protections declared in the EU Charter and enforced by the EU. The UK, by leaving the EU, deprives that person, a life-long resident of the EU, of those rights and protections.
The petition says “No it doesn’t.” This opens the door to lots of mischief by the EU.
Other people may have said what I am about to say (if so I apologise for repeating what they say without pointing out that they said it before me)…..
Why would you sign a petition to enable “E.U. citizens” to demand that the European Union impose laws in new areas? Nothing in this petition seems to say it is about REPEALIING European Union regulations – just adding new ones.
And why accept the concept of a “European Union Citizen” at all?
I do not just want the people of the United Kingdom to govern themselves, I want all the countries to be independent – not just the United Kingdom.
I want the European Union to NO LONGER EXIST.
The European Union is an extra lawyer of government – which imposes such things as its obsession with CRUSHING FREEDOM OF SPEECH on “member states” such as Austria.