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BREXIT

No-deal Brexit: Brits in Europe furious over EU’s new contingency plan

The European Commission published its contingency plans for a no-deal Brexit on Wednesday and asked member states to take a "generous approach" to securing the rights of UK citizens living in their countries.

No-deal Brexit: Brits in Europe furious over EU's new contingency plan
Photo: AFP

The EU Commission, just like the British government, is ramping up its preparations for the growing possibility that Britain could crash out of the EU without a deal.

Although a Withdrawal Deal has been agreed between London and Brussels it still appears unlikely that British Prime Minister Theresa May will have enough backing in the UK parliament to ratify the agreement.

MPs are not set to vote on the deal until January which means both sides are rapidly stepping up their contingency plans for a no-deal, an event both Brussels and London are still keen to avoid.

On the crucial subject of citizens rights the Commission has decided not to take action as a bloc but instead urge individual EU countries to take steps that would allow UK citizens to stay and give them time to apply for the relevant visa.

But campaigners for Britons in Europe say the EU's decision to leave the issue of citizens rights up to individual countries shows that the millions of EU citizens in the UK and the one million Brits in Europe have been “abandoned”.

'The UK will leave the EU in 100 days time'

They are particularly angry that Brits in the EU will not benefit from any transition period if there's a no-deal.

Jane Golding, Co-Chair of British in Europe said: ‘We are appalled to learn that, while aviation and financial services merit an extension of current agreements in the case of no deal, people do not.

“This means that there will be no soft landing for over 1.2 million British nationals living on the continent who will have to adjust to life as third-country nationals overnight once all their EU rights have been stripped from them.”

The EU Commission said on Wednesday: “The United Kingdom will leave the European Union in 100 days’ time.

“Given the continued uncertainty in the UK surrounding the ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement, as agreed between the EU and the UK on 25 November 2018 – and last week’s call by the European Council (Article 50) to intensify preparedness work at all levels and for all outcomes – the European Commission has today started implementing its “no-deal” Contingency Action Plan.”

“Today’s Communication invites Member States to take a generous approach to the rights of UK citizens in the EU, provided that this approach is reciprocated by the UK,” read a statement.

“In particular, Member States should take measures to ensure that UK citizens legally residing in the EU on the date of withdrawal will continue to be considered legal residents. Member States should adopt a pragmatic approach to granting temporary 2 residence status.

“It is recalled that the Commission has already adopted a proposal for a Regulation which exempts UK nationals from visa requirements, provided that all EU citizens are equally exempt from UK visa requirements.

“As regards social security coordination, the Commission considers it necessary that Member States take all possible steps to ensure legal certainty and to protect the rights acquired by EU27 citizens and UK nationals who exercised their right to free movement before 30 March 2019.”

The Commission also released a Q&A that covered the issue of citizens' rights.

It says EU countries should “stand ready to issue residence permits to UK nationals” and “take all measures to be able to issue those permits by the withdrawal date and to process applications for definitive residence permits by the end of 2019.”

Reacting to the plan British in Europe's Jane Golding added: “In practical terms with only 100 days to go, the Commission is merely asking the EU 27 to make sure we can still be considered legally resident on 30 March 2019 and stand ready to issue documents to provide evidence of that.

“This will be a massive and overwhelming task in some countries. After that, the EU 27 would then be asked to process applications for permanent third country national documents by the end of 2019.”

'Anxiety levels rising'

Golding said the Commission's plan was proof that British citizens will have to fend for themselves if there is a no-deal.

“With the spectre of no deal rising again, so are people’s anxiety levels and it is wrong that citizens’ rights were not guaranteed at the outset,” she said.

“Now British citizens have a been given a clear message that if there is no deal they are on their own, abandoned by the UK government and the EU. This is a far cry from the negotiators’ promises that we would be able to live our lives as before.”


Photo: AFP

Kalba Meadows from the Remain in France Together (RIFT) told The Local: “They're kicking the entire citizens' rights can across to individual member states, which is going to lead to widespread differences in treatment of British people living in different countries because residence rights for third country nationals is a mixture of shared and national competence.

“When the negotiations began, citizens' were the “first priority” for the Commission. Now we're just 'a' priority, and not a very high one at that.

“The only light in the tunnel is that France is well ahead with its own no deal contingency planning and has shown itself to be genuinely concerned to protect the rights of British residents, although obviously that is contingent on the UK's treatment of French citizens living there.

“All of this shows why a ring fenced citizens' rights agreement is so desperately important.”

Local Europe has reported in recent weeks the preparations certain EU countries are making for a no-deal Brexit.

In France French MPs have just voted through a bill that will allow the government to take emergency measures that would effectively allow Britons already in France to continue to stand work or be retired.

A similar move has been taken in Germany  and Sweden has also been stepping up its own contingency measures to prepare for a no-deal.

Member comments

  1. Calm down, this hysteria just frightens people. There is not going to be mass deportation of Brits from EU Member States. Yes, things are going to change, possibly to what existed before FOM and we will have to ‘regularise’ our status. But we still lived easily then and we will continue do so after next March.
    Don’t get caught up in politicians’ silly mind games!

  2. Two wise and helpful comments – there is too much synthetic anger around all this and it frightens the more nervous of the horses!

  3. Most things maybe..but where are the guarantees from April 2019 for our continued CPAM cover and therefore our mutuel? Fully private healthcare is impossibly expensive and would make life impossible.

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BREXIT

British actor married to Swedish pop star gives up post-Brexit fight to stay in Sweden

Former Bollywood actor Kenny Solomons' imminent return to the UK after failing to get post-Brexit residency has made national news in Sweden thanks to his marriage to the singer from the band Alcazar. He tells The Local why he's leaving.

British actor married to Swedish pop star gives up post-Brexit fight to stay in Sweden

The QX gala – Sweden’s glitzy, televised celebration of gay culture – is not the first place a man in his 20s would go to find a future wife. 

But that’s what happened to British actor Kenny Solomons.

Solomons, now 37, was already a well-known face in Sweden after playing the superhero in adverts for the internet provider Bredbandsbolaget. He was there to give out an award. Tess Merkel, singer for the nu-disco band Alcazar – one of Sweden’s most successful ever groups – was there to receive one.

“It was utterly insane,” Solomons remembers. “I had had a few drinks and then I woke up the next day in this typical Swedish apartment with kids’ toys everywhere. I was like, ‘what the fuck is going on?'”

“The kids were away with their dad, and Tess went off to work the next day and she left a note – as a joke – on the kitchen table that said ‘sorry I left you, but I took off to plan our wedding’. I thought it was a one-night stand. I was 25 years old and she was 17 years older. I didn’t expect to be married.”

The actor Kenny Solomons (right) arrives at the QX Gala in 2016. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT

But in 2015 they got engaged and then in 2017, they married in the Indian holiday paradise of Goa, making it legal for Sweden with a ceremony in Stockholm City Hall the next year. 

By then, Solomons was so deeply embedded in Stockholm’s celebrity whirl that everything from the Brexit referendum to the deadline for post-Brexit residency had more or less passed him by. It was only when he took a trip to Greece in the summer of 2022, his first international trip since the pandemic broke out, that he realised the mistake he had made. 

“We flew back through Serbia, which is outside the European Union, so as we were coming in through the Swedish border, they said ‘hey, you do realise that you’re going to need to send in a whole load of information’, and I was completely shocked. I had no idea. I mean, to some people, I might sound like an absolute moron, but I just wasn’t aware of it.” 

In some ways his ignorance was unsurprising, given the Swedish authorities’ decision not to contact British citizens directly, even digitally, to inform them of the need to apply for post-Brexit residency by the end of 2021, although there was information published online.

READ ALSO:

Unlike many Brits in Sweden, Solomons was at that point completely integrated, living in the upmarket Stockholm district of Hammarby Sjöstad, and speaking almost exclusively Swedish.   

“It wasn’t originally the plan to do everything in Swedish. It was after I started working and running a business here, that it just sort of kicked in,” he remembers. “After three or four years, I suddenly was like, ‘ah, OK, I’m speaking Swedish. My mother would be very proud, that me, a dyslexic boy from Southend-on-Sea in Essex, could speak even one word in another language!”

Because he only hung out with Swedes and rarely met other Brits, he had simply not heard about the Brexit deadline. 

“All of my friends are in the industry. I socialise among those who also work as artists here in Sweden,” he explains. “When you work as an entrepreneur or an artist, there is nobody to give you that little nudge and say, ‘hey, there is a thing going on called Brexit and it’s going to affect your status here in Sweden’. I had absolutely no idea that it would affect me in this way, and would still be affecting me four years on.”

Looking back, he remembers spending much of 2020 and 2021 desperately trying and eventually failing to save his chain of barbershops and hair-replacement therapy centres from bankruptcy due to the pandemic.

READ ALSO:

When he did apply for post-Brexit residency – nearly a year late – he was rejected as the Migration Agency does not treat ignorance as “reasonable grounds” for missing the deadline. He appealed the decision to the Migration Court, but this month decided he had had enough of waiting, given that rejection was “inevitable”. 

“It’s now 19 months since I sent in my appeal to the Migration Court, and the pressure of not knowing, every day, and the pressure of having to say ‘no’ to career opportunities outside of Europe, and the pressure of not knowing with 100 percent certainty that I can live and work in Sweden in the long run was just affecting my health, and my mental health as well,” he says.

“I hit the wall, was suffering with anxiety, and was incredibly unhappy. So I made the decision.” 

He’s now going to return to the UK and apply for spousal reunion with Merkel. As he has no young children of his own, there is little chance of getting granted the right to do this from within Sweden.

Since he left the UK as a young man, his mother has died, and his 60-year-old father has left their childhood home in Essex and moved to Chester on the other side of England, somewhere he has never been. 

“I guess I’ll go and sleep on his couch,” he says. “I can moan and be upset and say all these awful things. But I have my health and I have a place to go. There are people in a similar situation that don’t have any connections or ties left in the UK any longer, so I’m very grateful to at least have a couch to crash on while I figure out this next step.” 

His father got married in the middle of June, and Solomon’s plan is to return for the wedding party on August 24th, handing in his application for spousal reunion in Sweden within days of arrival. He has no idea if he will then have to wait six months, or two years, before he is granted the right to live again in Sweden.  

“My wife and I, we really always try to make the best out of a bad situation, whatever it is, so when I leave Sweden and start my process from my dad’s I want to continue to be able to give back to this country.” 

READ ALSO:

His next plan is to return to India, where he spent several years before coming to Sweden working as an actor in Bollywood films. 

“You’re gonna think I’m completely nuts. I want to fly to the most northern part of India and run from North India to South India, the whole way, and raise money for Läkare Utan Gränser [the Swedish arm of the global medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)].” 

He says that one of the silver linings to his situation is that as someone involved in Swedish showbusiness, his case has received media coverage, unlike hundreds of other British citizens who have been victims of Sweden’s strict application of the EU Withdrawal Agreement. 

“It’s a very, very great luxury and something I don’t take for granted that I have a platform that can be used for to spread my thoughts and my opinions,” he said, adding that he has also enjoyed sharing information with and trying to help other British people in the same situation. 

Tess Merkel’s band Alcazar performed at the Eurovision Grand Final in Malmö in 2024. Photo: Jessica Gow/TT

Now he’s looking forward to returning back to the UK, where family and friends were in May blown away by the surprise appearance of Merkel and the rest of Alcazar at the Eurovision Grand Final. 

“I had to keep it a secret from my family in England. I couldn’t tell anybody because Alcazar had written a contract with Eurovision,” he remembers. “So my family didn’t know, and they were just shocked when they came on. They Facetimed me just afterwards and said, ‘they really made fun of Alcazar. I felt really sorry for them’.”

But Alcazar, he said, had no issues with being made the butt of a joke about their ‘reunion’ not quite being the hoped-for Abba appearance. The are, he says, “a playful band”. 

“She is that person in real life. She’s absolutely fantastic. She’s an absolute gem. She’s my best friend,” he said of Merkel. “She might say to you, ‘it will be quite nice to have a bit of a break from Kenny. He’s a pain in the ass’. But taking this step is like losing my right hand, because we are so co-dependent on each other – in all the best ways.” 

Membership+ subscribers can listen to the full interview with Kenny Solomons in the Sweden in Focus Extra podcast, which will be available from Wednesday, June 26th.   

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