Expats may be left out in Brexit talks

FOLLOWING a Brexit, market access will be
the biggest issue: goods, services and capital
movements - then will come the awkward
question of the movement of people.
There’s a risk that politicians are going to
think about who is voting in the UK. They
are going to think about financial services,
which give critical donations to parties,
and that’s going to put much more political
pressure in that area. It will be higher up
the negotiations than expats.
It would be an enormous negotiation and
you never know what might become a political
football. It could be thrown off course
by a lot of different things, from personalities
to random events that hit headlines.
It might come down to bilateral deals. In
principle it would start from the status quo
and we would put forward a list of things that
we want to keep, such as the free market of
goods and services and then they would put
forward what they want to keep.
The lists would not match up exactly but
expats would appear on both sides.
Each side wants to protect its own and in
that sense it might be easier to discuss. It’s
an easy quid-pro-quo.
There’s a good chance that a deal could be
reached simply to grandfather the rights of
everyone who is already living outside the
UK in an EU country.
Future expats, those who leave after a
British exit, might however have more
problems unless we continue with the
current freedom of movement rules. While
some of the Eurosceptic arguments rest on
issues of sovreignty, the loudest voices in
the UK are against the freedom of movement
rules, so it seems likely that these
would change.
Existing expats, though, are likely to be
saved from this freedom of movement
discussions and treated as a special case.
The priority for expats should be to do a
deal for reciprocal protection of people who
are already here and extend it to tax and
inheritance – those sorts of political things.
I can see a scenario where both sides are
perfectly happy to protect all the rights of
expats on both sides. It’s possibly slightly
more likely than not. It could be a very easy
thing to agree but it would not be overwhelmingly
likely to be so.
A big percentage of the UK expats are
retirees. We would be asking for something
difficult - to protect people who are economically
inactive - and there are various
ways in which it could get complicated.
There could be some political problems
with health, unless we’re moving into a system
of health insurance cards, and social
security agreements between the countries.
There might also be some discriminatory
taxes on housing and inheritance unless we
negotiate a deal.
Meanwhile it might be convenient for the
British government to save money by not
updating pensions in the same way it does
with other non-EU countries and some of the
exportable bene-
fits would not be
exported.

Steve Peers is a
Professor of EU
Law and Human
Rights Law at
the University
of Essex