May plans post-election offer on citizens’ rights

LONDON — Theresa May has ordered up a Brexit olive branch.

The British prime minister has asked her country’s civil servants to prepare a “big, generous offer” on European citizens’ rights, ready to be presented shortly after the general election (assuming she wins).

The move, according to senior Whitehall aides familiar with the plan, reflects a desire to get Brexit negotiations off to a good start and reset relations following a six-week election campaign in which May has used the EU as a convenient punching bag — saying she would “not let the bureaucrats of Brussels run over us.”

“We have been asked to prepare a big offer for the week following the election,” one government official said. The official said the package was being drawn up to reassure the EU27 that Britain wanted to build consensus.

It’s also indicative of an eagerness among British negotiators to quickly resolve one of the issues the EU has said must be addressed before discussions on future trading relations can begin.

Officials hope the overture will send the clearest possible signal that the divorce talks will be amicable, smoothing the process toward an eventual comprehensive free-trade agreement — the main priority for the U.K. It is also likely to be lower-hanging fruit than the already acrimonious fight over how much the U.K. owes the EU.

“There will be quibbles about the dates [the cut-off date for new EU citizens arriving in the U.K.] but fundamentally it’s pretty generous,” the U.K. government official said. “Just how generous depends on who you are, but the intent is to offer something very generous.”

Both sides broadly agree that Britons living in the European Union and EU citizens living in the U.K. should keep their rights to residence, work and health care after Brexit.

The EU negotiating directives call citizens’ rights “the first priority for the negotiations because of the number of people directly affected and of the seriousness of the consequences of the withdrawal for them.”

May also tried to take the issue off the table, approaching German Chancellor Angela Merkel with an offer of a deal on the matter in November. (Merkel rebuffed the offer on the basis that there could be no negotiations before the U.K. formally notified the EU that it was leaving.)

But despite the political will on both sides, there are still plenty of potential pitfalls.

The prime minister has insisted any agreement must end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the U.K. — something that is likely to be a problem in Brussels. The EU has so far insisted its citizens must be able to seek recourse in the bloc’s highest court in the event of any dispute over their rights.

In a sign of how far London may have to reach to impress Brussels with a “big and generous” offer, senior EU officials have said they believe the U.K., in its own interests, should simply sign up to the principles on citizens’ rights in the EU27’s negotiating mandate.

The only hint of any dispute or disagreement on citizens’ rights, EU officials note, has come from London, including a sense that the U.K. is unwilling to grant the European Court of Justice any authority to enforce them.

In response to the U.K.’s hesitancy, the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has stressed in recent weeks that residency protections obtained prior to the U.K.’s exit date should be lifelong, and should also apply to relatives — including those who are not EU citizens, as is the case now.

Barnier, at a conference in Italy in May, warned: “No one should be confronted with a mountain of red tape” — a clear jab at the bureaucratic hurdles at Britain’s Home Office faces to speedily process residency applications and other paperwork.

Current and former senior U.K. government officials who spoke to POLITICO for this article acknowledged that the issue of protecting citizens’ rights is far more complicated than generally assumed and could yet be delayed or run into difficulty.

The offer could also be held up by an unexpected general election result or a more dramatic cabinet reshuffle in the immediate aftermath of the election should May remain prime minister, as is expected.

The package is being drawn up by Amber Rudd’s Home Office, not David Davis’s Department for Exiting the European Union. A spokesman for the department refused to speak on it ahead of the start of negotiations.

The process of pulling together a comprehensive package to cover all EU citizens crisscrosses a number of government departments because of its scale. The Department for Work and Pensions must sign off on proposals regarding ongoing access to benefits, the Home Office needs to agree on family travel rights and citizenship, while the Ministry of Justice, the Attorney General’s office and the Cabinet Office must be consulted on the final judicial oversight proposal.

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Government officials said that even if the package of measures is finalized in time for the election, it will need full cabinet sign-off before it can be formally laid on the table in Brussels.

“It needs cabinet-level clearance,” the official said. “It’s being driven by the home secretary, but it takes in a whole number of departments because it has implications for benefits and other things.”

While the majority of U.K. polls still point to a relatively comfortable Conservative majority, the prospect of a government led by Jeremy Corbyn has grown following Labour’s surge in the polls.

Corbyn has vowed to legislate to guarantee all EU citizens’ rights in the immediate aftermath of the election before opening negotiations to protect Britain’s access to the European single market.

It is unclear how Corbyn could unilaterally guarantee EU citizens’ rights in a manner acceptable to EU governments because many are looking for the European Court of Justice to be the guarantor of any future dispute, rather than the U.K. parliament or Supreme Court.

However, there is a clear division between Corbyn and May on the issue, with the Labour leader insisting that refusing to guarantee EU citizens’ rights unless U.K. nationals are afforded the same guarantee is unacceptable and treats people’s lives as a bargaining chip.

David M. Herszenhorn in Brussels contributed reporting to this article.