Guy Verhofstadt: Citizens’ rights at risk in Brexit talks

European Parliament’s point man on Brexit warns problem risks going unsolved ahead of December summit.

BERLIN — Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s point man on Brexit, warned the U.K. and the European Commission not to give short shrift to citizens’ rights as divorce talks enter a crucial phase.

“My concern is that citizens’ rights are not being well-managed,” Verhofstadt, who heads the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) group in the Parliament, said during an interview with POLITICO in Berlin. “I fear this problem will not be solved in the coming weeks.”

The Parliament would oppose any attempt to dilute citizens’ rights in order to secure a deal on financial arrangements, the so-called Brexit bill, Verhofstadt said. While the Parliament isn’t directly engaged in the talks, it will need to approve a final deal before it can go into effect.

Negotiators for the U.K. and the EU are keen to clear the way in the coming days for the European Council to take talks into so-called Phase 2, during which trade and other post-Brexit arrangements will be decided.

That can only happen when EU leaders declare “sufficient progress” has been made in three key areas — the financial settlement, the border dividing Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland, and citizens’ rights. Failure to move forward on those issues would create further delays to the Brexit timetable.

A decision is expected at the next European summit in mid-December.

Though both sides have expressed a willingness to quickly resolve the question of what rights EU citizens resident in the U.K. and British citizens living on the Continent would have post Brexit, they have yet to agree on the details.

Verhofstadt said the Parliament was concerned Europeans living in the U.K. would be forced to navigate a complicated bureaucratic maze in order to maintain their residency rights. It’s also not clear what rights family members of Europeans living in the U.K. would enjoy, he said. The Parliament identified the issue as one of its “red lines” for the talks and has been urging action for weeks.

“If this is not done in the right way, millions of people will be affected,” he said.

There are more than 3 million European citizens living in the U.K. and more than 1 million British living in the EU.

So far, each side has pointed to the other, with both insisting they were ready to strike a compromise.

“I don’t even understand this problem,” Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told an audience in mid-October. “Why not say, easily, with common sense … that things will stay as they are? The Europeans, ‘foreigners,’ as they are saying in London, they are there on the island, and so many British friends are here. Let them here, let them there. Why are we discussing nonsense like that?”

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