EU Parliament wants to ensure free movement for EU citizens

EU Parliament wants to ensure free movement for EU citizens

After Brexit, the EU and the UK want to negotiate their future relationships. The EU Parliament plans to set conditions for a close partnership.

The EU Parliament wants to ensure that EU citizens have the highest possible freedom of movement even after Brexit. This emerges from the draft resolution that the EU Parliament intends to adopt in Strasbourg next week. Corresponding concessions by the British government should, therefore, determine how close the European Union’s economic partnership with Great Britain will be in the future. The resolution is supported by all major groups.

The head of the Foreign Affairs Committee, David McAllister, said that free movement of workers is an integral part of the EU’s internal market. “The more you want to have access to the internal market, the more you have to follow our rules,” he said. McAllister pointed out that the British government also had “a lot to lose”. After all, 1.2 million people with a British passport currently lived in the EU.

For Great Britain, an end to the free movement of EU citizens is an important reason for the EU exit planned for January 31. In the difficult negotiations on the Withdrawal Treaty, both sides have so far agreed that there should in principle be exemptions for EU citizens already in Great Britain and British people in the EU. The resolution now planned by Parliament also refers to future cases in the period after the transition phase until the end of this year. Great Britain will remain in the EU single market and customs union for the time being. This time should be used to negotiate an ambitious free trade agreement.

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