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Brexit vote one year on: Citizens 'should not suffer', says EU advisor
An advisor to the EU's Brexit task force has said that "citizens should not be made to suffer" from the UK's decision a year ago to leave the union - and that they must be free to "continue their lives as they do today".
Addressing a Brexit conference in Brussels in the week that formal negotiations between Europe and Britain began, Stefaan De Rynck said maintaining the rights of British citizens in the EU - and European citizens in the UK - was the "first focus".
"They took out mortgages, they have kids in school," he said. "People have legitimately built their lives around that, and we have to guarantee that post-Brexit. They have enjoyed rights and are still enjoying them.
"We have made a deliberate choice to put citizens' rights first. We need to make sufficient progress before we move to the next phase. It's about unemployment benefits, access to healthcare, access to education."
He said the negotiations on Monday "got off on the right foot", and a working group group on citizens' rights would meet again in July.
"There may be some common ground," De Rynck told the Brexit conference at Bozar. "There will be no doubt a number of differences and we need to know those differences very soon."
Comments
I cannot for the life of me think of any reason why any sane Politian or human being is going to start demanding the removal of productive folk on the basis of Brexit, or indeed folk who have paid their dues and have a right to be there now. We are NOT going to be dragging people out of their jobs, schools and throwing them out of the country, it's NOT going to happen.
The people making political capital out of suggesting and/or insinuating that this will happen should be ashamed of themselves. All that is likely to happen is greater control of who in Britain gets to move to the EU and more control of who in the EU gets to move to the UK.
Big deal.
Oh, and you planks suggesting Brits are going to need a visa to go on holiday in Spain, go walk off a plank in to a large lake and take your scaremongering nonsense with you.