January 2020 update:

My petition to the European Parliament is still available for signing, and is still considered to be ‘live’. If you wish to sign, I suggest using this link to the website which contains details of how to do so. Due to EP procedures, it requires a little determination to sign, hence I have provided a help page. Alternatively, you can go straight to the EP petition page here. 

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On 2nd October I travelled to Brussels to hear my petition debated by the European Parliament petitions committee (PETI).

On occasions like this, the anxiety still jangles away unpleasantly in the background, but I managed to get myself to Brussels (and find a decent lunch!) I walked the mile to the Parliament, and despite a forecast of fine weather, this being Belgium, it rained on me…

I arrived in good time, and was met by members of the EP secretariat, who got me rapidly through security and into the chamber, which was in the form of a mini-hemicycle. I had expected to be sat somewhere towards the rear – but no: petitioners are seated on the floor of the chamber, along with MEPs and Commission representatives. Luckily I was familiar with most of the technology from my visits to the EP in Strasbourg.

Despite running early when I arrived, the debate did fall behind time – mostly because of the arrival of some of the EP ‘big guns’, notably Guy Verhofstadt (Lead on Brexit) and Antonio Tajani (former President of EP). Verhofstadt is never one to be brief, and he was still going well after the time petitioners were due to be heard.

As the time I had been given for my contribution came and went, I began to wonder whether I would get my chance before needing to head back to Midi to catch my Eurostar. In the event, my ‘caretaker’ managed to get my speech brought forward and I eventually spoke at about 17h20.

I got a round of applause, and as I was leaving the building, one of the British MEPs rushed out and congratulated me on my speech. So it seemed to go down well.

I have included the text of my speech below the photos.

Having watched, and taught, EU affairs for many years, this was a great experience. I can only say that anyone who doubts the value of European co-operation should watch the webcasts of such proceedings.

While this is admittedly a committee rather than the main chamber, proceedings are calm, unassuming and tinged with good humour. Those present seem to have few pretensions, and it is perhaps worth looking up the background a few of them, such as:

• Dolors Montserrat (Chair)
• Jude Kirton-Darling
• Claude Moraes
• Irina Von Wiese
• Christian Allard

When I arrived, the discussion was about how to extent animal welfare controls to laboratory animals and to curb the eating of songbirds in Cyprus. A significant issue. It is hugely varied. It was quite humbling and hugely enthusing to sit amongst such people from all over Europe and be heard and to hear their responses.

PETI hears several petitions at a time, grouped by themes. There were other representations from groups concerned about ex-pat rights and refugees after Brexit – but none other about the position of ‘regular’ British citizens. I am still left with the sense that while there is a lot of concern, no one really knows what to do about us. The Commission position is still that EU citizenship is a product of citizenship of a member-state and it would take a treaty change to alter that. Hence British citizens lose their rights if we leave. But they did not completely rule out a treaty change – huge though that would be – and there were a number of calls from MEPs for European citizenship to assume an identity independent from national ones. That would be contentious.

It is worth noting that PETI does not count numbers of signatures before admitting a petition. I was worried that mine only had a few hundred signatures – but there was one heard earlier in the session that had only THREE. It is the strength of the case that counts. And the ability to sit in a hearing and present one’s case is of course, conspicuous by its absence from the procedures in Westminster. While sitting there, I could not help but think that it will be an utter tragedy if Britons’ voices cease to be heard at the end of this month, or indeed at any point.

The meeting was web-cast and is available here.

• Beginning at 15h57’50”
• My speech is at 17h21’25”
• There is a Commission response to my points from one of Michel Barnier’s team at 17h47’47”
• Important point at 17:55’55” Where the representative says that the EC is not giving up on the existing Withdrawal Agreement despite what BJ says.
• There is debate from the Committee at 17:57’50 and an important (but probably little-known point) about the cost of passports at 18h03’52. (Why does a British passport cost nearly FIVE TIMES the EU average for people claiming naturalisation?)
• The section ends at around 18h14′.

Text of my speech:

Thank you for admitting my petition, and for giving me the opportunity to address you today.

Should Brexit happen, British citizens will in effect be stripped of their European citizenship. For many, this will be against their deeply-held wishes, and represents in effect the oppression of that group by its own government, similar in style if not degree, to events that often provoke moral outrage when they happen elsewhere in the world.

While accommodation will have to be found for nationals living in each other’s countries, pro-European Britons remaining resident in the UK will be the most disadvantaged group. Our rights and abilities to function in the rest of the EU risk being severely curtailed after Brexit.

As can be seen from the outpouring of pro-EU feeling in the UK, this is a greatly significant matter for many millions of us. It represents the theft of a deeply-important part of our identities by our own government and our peers. Our lives will be not only practically but culturally and emotionally diminished as a result. I have seen and experienced at first hand the deep anguish that this is causing.

Particularly for us islanders, whose history and geography have always set us slightly apart from the European mainstream, this is extremely important. It matters greatly to us that we can look our fellow Europeans straight in the eye and say “we are part of this project too”.

When it comes to resolving this issue, it is noticeable that our own administrations have had nothing whatsoever of substance to say to us for the past three years. We have become invisible; the daily rhetoric about the “will of the people” makes absolutely no reference to our wishes. As one commentator put it, “We are being written out of our own futures”. In short, the British government simply does not know what to do about us, and it is all too evident that the new UK administration cares even less than the last one did.

It is also very clear that Britons who are in favour of Brexit care not one iota for our welfare. They see this as a zero-sum victory for their views, and the likely consequences of this are not encouraging. I live in the constituency of the Home Secretary, and have stood on the streets of that constituency, experiencing the hatred of some Brexiters towards Remainers.

Guy Verhofstadt has argued that the lives of ordinary Europeans should not be harmed by Brexit. Whatever the political future, geographically and culturally speaking, Britons are still Europeans – and the lives of European-thinking Britons will be harmed by the actions of a minority of our fellows. I argue that the wider European community should not be prepared to let this happen, and should do whatever it can to mitigate the impact.

I maintain that should Brexit happen, and the U.K. becomes in effect just another external country from the EU’s perspective, it will be no business whatsoever of the UK government, what recognition and treatment the EU chooses to dispense to people within the territories of its own member-states.

I therefore call upon the EU to create a status – perhaps “associate citizen” – that would recognise this unique group of disadvantaged former EU citizens and provide them with as many as possible of their former rights whenever they are within EU27 countries. My petition sets out a number of possible dimensions of this. I suggest that this need not compromise any other citizenship arrangements either in the EU or the UK, and I urge the EU to act, unilaterally if necessary, to implement it.

I realise that there would be costs to doing this, and therefore it would be reasonable for those to be at least in part recovered. An application charge (and perhaps other checks) could also test the genuineness of the application – but I would urge you to implement any such system in a way that does not exclude those on low incomes. The EU has a great record on promoting equality and will surely recognise the importance of this. Again, I submit that such procedures would be nothing whatsoever to do with the UK government.

As someone who has been engaged for many years in European education in the UK, I urge you seriously to consider such moves, not least because they will help preserve a European consciousness in the UK during the dark times outside the EU. Should Brexit happen, providing this identity-option would be very significant in terms of reconciling British Europeans to an unenviable situation, and helping to heal the rift in our society – as something similar through the Good Friday Agreement has helped resolve such issues in Northern Ireland. An act of faith such as this can only encourage the U.K. to rejoin in due course.