Brexit may mean Britons need visas into the EU? What else did they expect? September 14, 2016
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
The Guardian front page on Saturday was making a lot of this. But to be honest read any sober commentators since the referendum result (and indeed before it) and that was near enough a given should Brexit become a reality.
Steve Peers, a professor of EU law at the University of Essex, said he could envisage British holidaymakers having to apply online through a future EU electronic visa waiver scheme before travelling to Spain or France, for example.
“It’s going to annoy a lot of people,” he said. “We can ask for full free movement, but any arrangement is going to have to be reciprocal, so you have to ask what Nigel Farage and the others will accept. We have no idea what the rules will be.”
Exactly. No idea. And none from the start. What geniuses thought this was a good plan?
British-based financial institutions must be prevented post-Brexit from selling their services in the eurozone, Emmanuel Macron, the likely progressive left candidate for the French presidency has told the Guardian.
He said a ban on so-called financial passporting rights, seen as potentially highly damaging to the City of London and one of the most fraught issues in Brexit talks, “should not be seen as a technical issue but a matter of sovereignty”.
One doesn’t have to be a fan of Macron in the slightest, and I’m not, to see which way matters are going in the EU in relation to Brexit.
David Davis, the Brexit secretary, has admitted the UK could have to revert to World Trade Organisation tariffs if it leaves the EU without having struck a trade deal with the bloc.
The cabinet minister said this was not a very likely outcome but still a possibility if the UK was not successful in talks with the EU.
The Labour MP Chuka Umunna, chair of the campaign group Vote Leave Watch, said Davis had “let the cat out of the bag [about] a real possibility that we could fall out of the EU with no trade deal, and face swingeing and destructive tariffs on key exports.”
Why, and I know I was asking this last week, did people like Davis believe that anyone would give the UK preferential treatment, even if it doesn’t quite come to no trade deal?
Simple arrogance?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
This is an interesting article on the subject. It is also an interesting corrective from those who took the Left remain position in the name of defending ‘free movement of workers’ to see that there are many workers living and working within the EU who do not enjoy anything remotely approaching free movement, as this article makes clear. There are tens of thousands who fall into that category here in Ireland and there must be millions across Europe. What ‘free movement of workers’ in the EU means is free movement for workers who hold EU member state passports and these are distinctly different statuses. But, yes, potentially tough times ahead for British subjects used to travelling freely across Europe. Which is why I find the idea that Theresa May and the Tories are impregnable politically. The outworkings of Brexit as negotiated by a vicious Tory government and an EU establishment known for its vindictiveness, will not be pretty.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/restricted-travel-british-people-nigerian-visa-passports
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Of course the free movement in the EU is limited to some people and excludes perhaps 10% of the people living in the EU. Not exactly international solidarity.
But that doesn’t invalidate its value to a lot of people.
Lexiteers just don’t / won’t get that.
I love the standard Lexiteer slight of hand when you talk about the value of free movement to many people in the EU to immediately move the topic onto the exceptions and the EU’s murderous refugee non-policy.
But all aspect of the EU are bad for all citizens because erm… the great leader of our sect said so.
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GW that’s not really an argument. Did you read the article? The Nigerian writer eloquently sets out how he, while fully legally resident in the UK, must get visas etc to travel to other parts of Europe and this, very considerably, reduces what putative value ‘free movement’ has for the writer and, presumably, many, many more workers in a similar situation across the EU.
It’s plain silly to argue that ‘all aspects of the EU are bad for all citizens…’; clearly there are some positives to the EU for workers, free movement probably foremost among them.
But clearly you believe that free movement should be restricted to EU passport holders only, which is a clear inference to your argument, and that can conceivably be a Left wing position given the restrictions on non-EU passport holders movements and, of course, the disastrous refugee situation.
It seems like it has taken rumours that Hungarian border guards are on the verge of being ordered to open fire on refugees on their border to provoke any response from the EU and that is limited to the Luxembourg government calling for Hungary’s explusion.
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I think that’s not a correct reading of his argument cmk, the restrictions on movement by non EU citizens in the EU is very much a product of national rather than EU concerns, as regard Hungary did you miss the calls from within the EU that it be expelled? There’s an obvious tension given the fact the EU isn’t a federal state between national sovereignty and EU wide rights. Schengen is merely the most pointed example of same prior to the refugee crisis, but I think there’s a bug if sleight if hand in relation the the EU in this argument too. All states have greater or lesser controls on access and sometimes exit, to sah that invalidates the EU because it hasnt done away with them is a real conceptual stretch. No one least of all us here would argue the EU was perfect but actual freedom of movement as it exists is in int’l terms rather better than many other places.
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The more I think of it the more I think the line expressed above us problematic cmk. For once Brexit occurs precisely the same situation will pertain in the UK as you complain about in the EU, indeed Brexit makes the situation worse because it adds one extra state where such conditions prevail outside the EU, and arguably much worse because the forces behind Brexit want even more stringent controls on immigration and refugee numbers than the EU does. And if there are future exits the situation worsens further still as each state erects barriers against entry and travel. If you do believe freedom of travel is important its hard to understand why a patchwork of individual states most with right forces dominant in exit campaigns are going to lead to more progressive outcomes on freedom of movement than the EU flawed and all as it is.
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My point relates to the view outlined by the writer of the Guardian article that ‘freedom of movement’ is not universal within the EU. During the Brexit campaign the argument was made that the Left should vote remain to defend ‘freedom of movement’ for workers (a valid enough reason to vote to remain) but that perspective ignored, completely, the millions of workers who live and work in the EU but who, because they are not citizens of EU or EEA member states, have to negotiate the tangle of national visa requirements etc. The correct position, in my view, if you were arguing for ‘freedom of movement’ as a reason to stay in the UK would be argue that all legally resident non-EU citizens be accorded the same freedom of movement as EU citizens but also that an open borders policy should apply for African and Middle Eastern migrants who, in the overall scheme of things, would be have a minimal effect on Europe in terms of demographic, rather it would beneficial.
I wasn’t aware that an EU institution have called for Hungary to be expelled but that is an interesting development.
The Tories are having their a**ses handed to them on a plate over Brexit and I don’t think they will survive the coming few years, regardless of their 40% in the polls right now. But the toxic ‘immigration’ debate in the UK does appear to have as one its unintended consequences, as you note, the potential of travel restrictions for UK subjects. I personally don’t think there should be any restrictions, post Brexit, on UK subjects living, working and travelling in the EU but, then again, I think a Nigerian should be able to come and live and work in the EU with the same rights as the rest of us. A bit utopian in the present context but there you go.
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But the same problem arises, freedom of movement is restricted on non citizens pretty much everywhere, the remain argument didn’t stand or fall on the fact it wasn’t unrestricted but your argument is on very shaky ground because supporting Brexit increases controls and constraints for workers entering the UK. And you implicitly demand remain peoplematch a higher rhetorical standard than the actual objective standard (ie the reality of UK immigration and refugee legislation post Brexit) your de facto position is.
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Just on the Tories, and they will shape Brexit for the next four years one way or another, what likely UK adminostration do you see introducing open borders any time soon…or ever? Or even just ameliorating matters? And what would such an amelioration be or how could it feasibly occur given sentiment on border controls and immigration during and after the referendum in the UK quite above support for the Tories?
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That business about a call for the expulsion of Hungary from the EU. I read a headline which said Luxembourg was calling for Hungary’s expulsion. Or is it an EU institution is calling for it?
Whatever.
I think this is another indication that the EU is creaking at the seams. It’s in trouble. The UK going for the exit door could be the start of a bigger break-up. A break-up not caused by the Brexit decision but one that was coming anyway. It’s about refugees, immigration, xenophobia. Maybe more fundamentally, is it about what countries get from the EU? The poorer Eastern countries now seeing that they aren’t getting the economic benefits they used to get, so why play the game any longer?
Reading a piece in the Guardian today about the social democrat president of the Czech Republic – he’s at least as Trumpish as the Hungarian leader and the leaders of Slovakia and Poland are in that club too.
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“Creaking at the seams”. Of course it is Joe. And that Junker thinks he has any legitimacy to propose solutions is a sign of how deluded the EU core is.
Europe will either find new democratic forms of confederation from below or fly apart into competing nation states. Most if not all of them with brutal forms of racist authoritarian crony capitalism.
The second option is where Front National, AfD, UKIP, and Leninist Lexiteers want to be. I’d rather try for the first option.
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“clearly you believe that free movement should be restricted to EU passport holders only,”
Nope. Never said that. I’m with William Burroughs – go back to the time before passports and let anyone go where they will.
Or as the modern slogan goes “no person is illegal”.
But believe what you choose about my beliefs.
Nor did I deny that the EU doesn’t accord freedom of movement to some workers. Nor that the EU non-policy on refugees and migrants is mass murder by neglect at best, by policy at worse.
All that is compatible with 90% of the people in EU enjoying freedom of movement and valueing it.
But perhaps that argument is too subtle to comprehend.
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The Nigerian writer eloquently sets out how he, while fully legally resident in the UK, must get visas etc to travel to other parts of Europe
This includes across the border into the ROI as well (I’ve had personal experience).
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Tim Fenton put the boot into a hilariously pompous editorial in the Sun where they express outrage that Brits may have to jump through hoops to travel into the EU – http://zelo-street.blogspot.ie/2016/09/sun-eu-visa-rant-busted.html. As always when it comes to the media, you have to wonder whether they are laughing at the stupidity of the lemmings they led to the edge of the cliff or whether they really believe this crap.
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Send the Paras in for a pre-emptive strike to take out the French and Spanish immigration authorities. That should sort it.
Really these people live in some sort of Dunkirk bubble.
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It really is incredible that they thought that everyone would be on bended knee to the UK wanting to do favourable deals on trade, travel etc…. …. or else of course they really didn’t think that they would win
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“the campaign group Vote Leave Watch”
Anything that finishes with ‘Watch’ has the whiff of crankery off it, do they not know that yet? There used to be (may still be in fact) a blog called ‘CIF Watch’ that consisted of diatribes against the Guardian for being too critical of Israel, and of course Ireland has the bizarre Twitter presence of ‘Populist Watch’ (who got his own write-up in the Irish Times, because any middle-class person with a laptop who rails against ‘populism’ is inherently worthy of being taken seriously). Even Aaronovitch Watch, which was generally a good blog, should have chosen a better name.
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Sure, I hate that crankiness too but davis ‘s words still stand.
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Oh yeah, of course, but it just makes me picture Umunna sitting in his room posting on a blog and maybe using capital letters more than he should.
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That made me laugh out loud. I’ll bet he does!
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Well Aaronovtich Watch did have the virtue of making it clear it was about watching David Aaronovitch, which was basically what we did.
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Didn’t it have a tag-line saying ‘incorporating World of Decency’? I can’t help thinking that even when it’s someone as terrible as DA, giving them their own ‘— Watch’ will just be an ego boost.
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I’d share the revulsion re DAs approach and rhetoric too but I do agree, that sort of focus can almost be problematic however much I understand it
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Having said that of course I really enjoyed a lot of the posts taking down Aaro and other Decentists.
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What a bunch they were. Loathsome.
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This by the way is a superb and indeed definitive comment on the sort of epiphany-experiencing people who were often the subject of the blog.
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Didn’t it have a tag-line saying ‘incorporating World of Decency’?
Yeah. I think that was already there by the time I started commenting: possibly because the blog branched out from Aaro to cover Nick Cohen, Norman Geras, Harry’s Place and other Iraq War enthusiasts. I think the “incorporating” was a gag imitating magazines and comics which take over other publications and include their names, for a while, on the masthead.
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You put this together with the slate of negotiators put forward by the EU, the Apple Tax verdict (no UK you will not be allowed to launder IMNC profits from the EU) and it is apparent that the EU believes the UK has blinked and is now applying all the pressure it can.
The UK is screwed. Their only way out is to avoid triggering Article 50.
The IMBCs want them to stay in the EU or at least mimic Norway.
Norway doesn’t want them in with Norway.
Each country has vetoes and/or wrenches they can throw.
No way a deal is hammered out in 2 years.
What chance of a deal with the EU that satisfies Tory donors and passes a referendum?
First step in never triggering A50 is destroying its supporters – hence the big platform Johnson et al have been given to shoot their feet off.
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That’s more or less it Gendjinn.
Add to that that Germany wants Little Britain to remain because it could always be relied upon to rubber stamp the most aggressive austerianism. Hence all the ‘let’s not be hasty…’ signals coming out of Berlin.
Not to mention the wishes of the US.
But the potential for cock-up in May’s putative strategy is huge, and a consequence could well be a split in the Tory party.
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Indeed. Brexit has dropped off the radar over here. It’s Trump/Clinton all the time.
Isn’t UKIP the Tory split in slow motion?
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As a result of people apparently failing to understand that travel,sovereignty, immigration and so on work both ways, you get stuff like this: the people who are on the receiving end here (like myself) have gone from having security, and guaranteed rights, to having no idea whether they will retain any of these rights and no idea how long it will take to resolve. You can’t plan anything in your life. You don’t know anything.
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I have to preface my remarks with the point that I’m no great fan of the EU as presently constructed (and I think you too share, and indeed educated me about, a critique in regard to the most problematic aspects) – but the sheer lack of effort to engage with the reality of it and how this would impact on people both in the UK and across the EU is beyond shocking. It’s completely destabilised people’s lives and plans. And the worst, albeit most obvious aspect, is that while those with capital are able to ride it out relatively straightforwardly ordinary workers have no such resources and precariousness is exacerbated.
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Btw did you see Sturgeon’s comments this evening about how she was gobsmacked at how there were so few answers to basic questions about Brexit from the Tory government. She is a rock of good sense on all this.
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It is amazing how unprepared they are for the reality.
I guess those that cooked the thing up were a mix of deeply insular British business interests and politicians who regard Brexit as a bit of a game in the dorm of whichever private school extruded them.
Neither of which parties were ever renowned for giving a toss about anyone outside their class.
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“The underlying assumption of the Good Friday agreement between the two governments was that both parts of Ireland would be included in a zone of free movement of goods and people; an assumption that is in the process of being unilaterally reversed by the UK side’s decision to leave that zone. Brexit will thus devastate trade flows, and human contact, within Ireland, with incalculable consequences,..-John Bruton.
https://www.ft.com/content/9d364f78-78e0-11e6-97ae-647294649b28
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Jesus Christ. I hate to say it given the source, JB, but he’s actually right.
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‘Brexit will thus devastate trade flows’-
only the legal flows tho’
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Anyone want to go halfsies on Slab Murphy’s farm?
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“Brexit will thus devastate trade flows, and human contact, within Ireland, with incalculable consequences”
Is that not a bit ott? ‘Devastate’, ‘incalculable consequences’?
I think that’s way ott. Brexit will be an inconvenience but we’ll get over it, imho!
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A hard land border on the island again? I think that’s potentially very damaging indeed. Anyone political active from that part of the island I’ve spoken to from whatever party are deeply concerned. And actually we know from our own history that the hardening of partition in the 40s and 50s caused enormous damage as towns on either side of the border already part isolated by partition saw it worsen significantly (in part due to the different roads the parts of the island took during the Emergency, but also as the cross border infrastructure such as rail was disassembled etc). Of course ultimately things will stabilise, but potentially at a much worse point than hitherto.
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“There is no doubt at all that the Good Friday agreement takes precedence in international law over the opinion that is the Brexit decision.”-President Higgins.
http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/my-personal-presidency-michael-d-higgins-talks-to-fintan-o-toole-1.2793874
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That’s a most interesting point Higgins makes.
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An aside “British-based financial institutions must be prevented post-Brexit from selling their services in the eurozone, ” Was it this that allowed bit a Gib and Malta based companies sell “cheap” insurance here without these countries being liable if they failed.
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[…] Brexit may mean Britons need visas into the EU? What else did they expect? […]
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