Editorial of the “World”. Italian, Spanish or French au pairs arrested when they get off the plane at Heathrow or Gatwick and placed in a detention center, then sent back to their country. Poles, Bulgarians and Romanians also forced to turn around because they were suspected of looking for work. For nationals of the European Union (EU), Brexit now looks like a relentless customs post.
In the first quarter alone, 3,294 of them were turned away at a UK border, six times more than in the same period of 2020. Since the implementation of Brexit, the 1er January, to work and, a fortiori, to settle in the United Kingdom requires a visa which is issued only to holders of a job offer offering a salary of at least 2,500 euros per month.
This suppression of free movement and installation, which is the prerogative of citizens of the European Union, is a direct result of the British decision to leave the EU. This is all the less of a surprise given that the end of this freedom was the very first argument put forward by supporters of Brexit during the 2016 referendum. The extreme right’s demand for border closures , including the Europeans, was echoed by Boris Johnson, the campaign’s conductor, in the form of the hit slogan “Let’s take back control” of our borders.
While Europeans applying for work in the United Kingdom are at the mercy of the mood of a British customs officer, other citizens of the Union, already established across the Channel, have had to produce a heap of documents to land the “resident” status. More than 300,000 cases, out of 5.4 million applicants, have still not been decided as the June 30 deadline approaches. Hundreds of thousands of expatriate Europeans risk finding themselves in an uncertain legal situation.
Pawns on the British political spectrum
That nationals of neighboring countries, united by history, by geography and by decades of free movement, see themselves in such a precarious situation should not please any citizen of Europe. Neither those in the EU – who have asked for nothing – nor the British, whose freedom to move and settle on the continent is symmetrically curtailed. The average European now experiences both the humiliations suffered by migrants knocking on the door of a hostile country and the political instrumentalisation of their situation.
Because the European “immigrants” in the United Kingdom are above all pawns on the British political spectrum and a bargaining chip in the great Brexit showdown which continues. The mistreatment of Europeans delighted a large part of Mr Johnson’s electorate, who knew how to play it perfectly. It also strongly resembles a message sent by his government to the Twenty-Seven, while huge political and economic disputes – Northern Ireland, financial services, fisheries – remain on the table.
The experience of Europeans in the United Kingdom is a concrete illustration of the immense regression represented by Brexit, which recreates forgotten barriers between economic players and between citizens. The European Union has no reason to be intimidated by such maneuvers or to allow its citizens to be bullied. She must not accept that the UK visa tax differs, as it does, between EU countries. Nor let a pernicious “local xenophobia” be exploited, which sends Europe back to its old demons.
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