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BREXIT

‘Choose Freedom’: EU passport campaign launched across Europe

Imagine a post-Brexit scenario whereby Brits will be issued with EU passports to secure the right to freedom of movement across the 27 member states of the European Union.

'Choose Freedom': EU passport campaign launched across Europe
Photo: hyrons/Depositphotos

That is exactly what the European Commission will be asked to consider if a citizen’s initiative can garner one million signatures from across Europe.

The “Choose Freedom” EU passport campaign was launched this week with the support of Brits living across Europe.

Glyn Hughes, a 57-year-old engineering designer from Derbyshire, came up with the initiative.

Sue Wilson, the chair of  Bremain in Spain which campaigns for the UK to remain in the European Union and to protect the rights of British migrants living and working in Spain, is one of the co-signatories who presented the EU citizen’s initiative.

“There have been various schemes created in a bid to get EU citizenship but it’s complicated because the EU is not itself a nation state so can’t offer citizenship,” Wilson, who moved to Alcocebre in the province of Castellon with her husband a decade ago, told The Local.

“To get the rules changed would need another treaty. But the EU Commission does have the power to issue passports so our initiative is a way of achieving the same thing within rules that already exist.”

The proposal was accepted by the EU Commission as valid this week and now needs one million signatures in support over the next year in order to be presented for debate at the European Parliament.

“With 500 million EU citizens across 28 states, we have a lot to play with,” she said adding that any citizen can vote although there were exceptions against UK and Irish citizens residing in five countries, including France and Portugal, because of the voting laws of those countries.

 Brexit brings an uncertain fate to the estimated two million Britons who currently reside in EU-member states – and the three million EU nationals living in the UK – and the conditions in which they will be allowed to stay in their adopted homelands is up for negotiation once the British government trigger Article 50.

On Tuesday, Brexit Secretary David Davis told Sweden's EU affairs and trade minister Ann Linde that securing the rights of Brits living in EU nations is a priority for the UK government in its forthcoming negotiations over leaving the union.

“We are determined to get a good outcome for EU citizens in Britain and Brits in the EU, to protect the rights of British citizens and EU nation citizens and get an answer quickly,” he told the media at the Swedish Foreign Ministry’s office in central Stockholm.

“We would have liked to have an answer already, but it will be the very first thing on the negotiation agenda once they start. We understand people feel uncertain,” he added.

Brits in Spain are mounting campaigns to make sure their voices are heard.

“Whatever the result of the Choose Freedom campaign,” explained Wilson. “I hope – at the very least – that it will prove to all European governments how strongly we value our EU citizenship, and the lengths to which we are prepared to go to hold onto those rights and freedoms.”

For more information about the Choose Freedom campaign and to cast your vote, visit the Bremain in Spain website.

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GIBRALTAR

UK soldiers expelled from Spain after crossing from Gibraltar posing as tourists

Spain has expelled four Royal Navy servicemen who crossed the Spain-Gibraltar border on foot three times in a single day while dressed in civilian clothing, with Spanish media claiming they were checking the porosity of the border.

UK soldiers expelled from Spain after crossing from Gibraltar posing as tourists

Spanish police expelled four British soldiers from Spain on Monday night, removing them from the country and sending them back to Gibraltar after it emerged that the four Royal Navy personnel had entered Spain illegally while “posing as tourists”, as the Spanish press has reported.

The incident comes a week after the British Navy carried out military drills in the waters surrounding Gibraltar, the British overseas territory that Spain still claims sovereignty of, and amid the seemingly never-ending negotiations between Spain and the UK to finally settle a post-Brexit deal.

READ ALSO: Gibraltar Brexit deal ‘close’ as Brits crossing into Spain use fake bookings

The expulsions, now reported in the Spanish press by Europa Sur and confirmed to El Periódico de España by official sources, occurred after the four soldiers arrived in Gibraltar on a civilian flight and entered into Spain. They also had return tickets via Gibraltar.

They then reportedly passed themselves off as tourists and entered Spain on foot, staying at a four-star hotel in La Línea de la Concepción, the town in the Cádiz province of Andalusia that borders Gibraltar.

Stranger yet is that they crossed the border at La Línea on up to three occasions in the space of a few hours.

READ ALSO: What Brits need to know before crossing the border from Gibraltar to Spain

Spanish authorities detected their presence because two of the soldiers tried to return to Gibraltar at night.

At the border, Spanish police officers enquired as to the reason for their entry, to which the soldiers replied that they were on their way to work and brandished British military documentation.

The police decided that their entry into Spain had been irregular because they did not meet the Schengen Borders Code requirements demanded of non-EU citizens entering EU territory.

According to Europa Sur, Spanish police then asked the two soldiers to call their colleagues in the hotel in order to collect their luggage and return to Gibraltar, which took place at midnight on Monday 18th March.

The Spanish press has stated that it is common for soldiers to try to stay in Spanish territory by concealing their military status and entering while posing as tourists.

The motive for the soldiers’ presence, particularly their repeated trips across the border, remains unknown.

The military drills in the area seem to suggest that the soldiers may have taken part in or be due to take part in further exercises and wanted to enter as tourists.

Spanish media also suggests that they could have been testing the porosity of the border, though these claims remain unsubstantiated.

Gibraltar’s post-Brexit status still remains unresolved. The EU and UK government are now onto their 18th round of treaty negotiations after the framework agreement between London and Madrid made on New Year’s Eve 2020 essentially ‘fudged’ the border issue, leaving Gibraltar’s status within the Schengen area undefined.

Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said in late-2023 that “we are very, very close” to finalising a Brexit agreement.

“I would sign a deal with Britain over Gibraltar tomorrow,” Albares told journalists at the time. Yet no agreement was made, despite the Minister’s positivity, nor the appointment of former UK Prime Minister David Cameron as Foreign Secretary.

Albares’ comments came at a time when it was reported in the Spanish press that many UK nationals have been using fake hotel bookings in order to try and bypass the Schengen rules and trick their way through border checks.

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