Abstract
Although traumatic, the ongoing Brexit process does not fundamentally alter either the legal status of European citizenship or the debates about it within the European Union (EU). Citizenship and free movement are so fundamental to the European project that even the new status of an important state like the UK does not change the political dynamics surrounding them.
Introduction
Although Brexit has consequences on citizenship and free movement, the impact of COVID-19 may be more far-reaching and consequential, at least in the short term: the middle of the largest pandemic in over a century is a bad time to prognosticate about the future of EU citizenship. 1 The free movement of people and the drive for common rights have been central elements of European integration since its origins, and Brexit does not fundamentally alter this fact. But COVID-19 may have significant, lasting effects on the politics of citizenship and internal migration in Europe. Of course, Brexit is a traumatic experience in the historical development of European integration, but the newly developing status of the UK has precursors such as the relationship between the EU and Switzerland (where free movement provisions are subject to bilateral treaties), Norway (where free movement and even citizenship take place within a Nordic framework), and other states such as Canada. 2 Of particular interest for free movement and citizenship post-Brexit is the status of Northern Ireland, which this article also explores. Because of the emerging nature of the COVID-19 situation, this article devotes some attention to the pandemic. As of this writing, the pandemic has disrupted transportation and travel networks; may alter the nature of cross-border work and leisure activities; and forced a re-examination of the previously open borders not only between member states but also within them, dating from early departure bans and other travel restrictions starting with lockdowns of certain cities in northern Italy in late February 2020. Starting from characterizing citizenship and common rights as central to the European project, this article next discusses the ongoing Brexit process, existing models of EU relations with proximate states, and an overview of some key current issues and political debates regarding European citizenship and how Brexit may affect them. The overall conclusion is that public health emergencies such as the current coronavirus pandemic may affect European citizenship more than the Brexit process, despite considerable uncertainty regarding the ongoing negotiations required by Brexit or even whether Brexit may lead to a changed status for Scotland, Northern Ireland, or other parts of the UK—or indeed whether the UK might rejoin the EU. In the meantime, the absence of the UK from EU decision-making bodies makes integration-minded decisions regarding citizenship more likely, even as other issues and challenges require political attention.
Brexit and the Rights of EU Citizenship
From the earliest days of European integration in the post-war period, free movement—of goods, services, capital and people—has been one of the core values and aspirations of the European project. The idea of common European rights, including ultimately a common European citizenship, has also always been part of the discussion as a goal of European integration (Maas, 2007, 2020b). Indeed, by the late 1960s and the first few years of the 1970s, it appeared that the common legal status of nationals of the member states would be formalized with a common European citizenship. But the first enlargement, which brought the United Kingdom along with Ireland and Denmark into the Community in 1973, changed the political balance and stymied the formal introduction of European citizenship. After having again failed to be incorporated in the Single European Act, the legal status was formally inserted into the treaties only with Maastricht, which granted all EU citizens four sets of rights: free movement rights, political rights, the right to common diplomatic and consular protection abroad, and the right to petition Parliament and appeal to the ombudsman.
Maastricht consolidated and expanded the free movement rights that had been gradually developing since the first rights for coal and steel workers (Maas, 2005), by decoupling free movement from employment status and giving them direct effect, meaning that the right to move and reside anywhere within EU territory became an individual right for all EU citizens regardless of economic status. As discussed below, this key right of EU citizenship is very popular across the member states (including the UK) and is also the one most affected by Brexit, for many EU citizens in the UK and for many UK citizens in the rest of the EU. Losing the right to live and work anywhere within the EU may be the largest impact of Brexit on many people in the UK. For EU27 citizens moving between member states within the post-Brexit EU, however, Brexit has little or no effect on free movement. This is the key reason that Brexit’s impact on EU citizenship is relatively minor, at least for those who are not UK citizens or EU citizens wanting to move to the UK.
With Maastricht, all European citizens also gained the right to vote and to be elected in European Parliament and local elections in their state of residence, under the same conditions as citizens of that state. Over the years, these political rights have grown somewhat in importance, even though participation rates for EU citizens living outside their state of citizenship have traditionally been quite low. With Brexit, the situation of EU27 citizens living elsewhere in the EU is of course unaffected. But EU27 citizens living in the UK and UK citizens living in the EU are very strongly affected. As a press release from France’s Ministry of foreign affairs clarifies:
The withdrawal agreement between the European Union and the UK contains no transitional provisions on the electoral rights of British people in member states. On the contrary, the agreement specifies that the clauses of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union which provide for European citizens’ right to vote and stand in European and municipal elections, and the acts adopted on the basis of these provisions, are not applicable to the UK during the transition period set out in the agreement. Moreover, in France the right to vote and stand in elections requires possession of French nationality or, for municipal and European elections, the nationality of a European Union member state. Consequently, from Saturday 1 February onwards, British nationals will cease to enjoy electoral rights in France which were linked to their European citizenship, and this will trigger their automatic removal from the electoral roll. British nationals will therefore be unable to vote or be candidates in the municipal and communal elections of 15 and 22 March 2020. However, British municipal councillors elected before 1 February will remain in office until their term of office expires, as there is no legal provision for their compulsory resignation. (France, Ministry of the Interior, 2020)
Yet this picture is too simple, because there are bilateral negotiations between the UK and many EU27 member states about continuing the free movement arrangements that had been in place prior to Brexit. Citizens of the UK and qualifying Commonwealth or Irish citizens living in the UK can vote in all UK elections. 3 But citizens of the EU27 member states would not automatically have their rights to vote and stand as candidate continue. The number of people affected is not small: 1.9 million people in England and Wales (4.5% of all registered voters), 132,800 people in Scotland (3.2% of all registered voters)—and of course millions of voting age UK citizens living in the EU27 (UK Parliament, 2019). In Scotland and Wales, all residents can vote in local elections, regardless of their nationality. In England and Northern Ireland, however, this right is more limited. The UK government decided to continue the right to vote in local elections (although not the right to stand as candidate) for EU citizens for the May 2021 local elections (The Electoral Commission, n.d.)—but as of this writing it is unclear what will happen after this.
The right of UK citizens abroad to vote in UK elections is restricted to those who have resided in the UK within the past 15 years, so UK citizens who made use of their EU free movement rights and have been residing in the EU for 15 years or longer have lost the right to vote in the UK, and as a result of Brexit they may also no longer have the right to vote in their place of residence. ‘Reciprocal voting rights for EU citizens in the UK, and UK citizens living in the EU, did not form part of the Withdrawal Agreement negotiations under Theresa May. The UK intends to agree reciprocal arrangements with EU Member States on a one-by-one basis’ (UK Parliament, 2019)—and as of this writing, such arrangements have been made with Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg and Poland. Interest groups such as the 3 million (for EU27 citizens in the UK) and British in Europe (for UK citizens in the EU27) have been encouraging the UK and various EU member states to reach bilateral agreements quickly, pointing to the democratic norm in which residents should have a say in decisions affecting them, as well as many examples of locally elected political leaders who will need to step down from their positions (UK citizens elected in the EU27 and vice versa) (the3million, n.d.; Independent, 2020).
EU citizenship’s third set of rights—the right to consular and diplomatic protection by other member states when in third countries—was an innovation in international law; it was expected that introducing common protection arrangements for Union citizens in third countries would ‘strengthen the idea of European solidarity as perceived by the citizens in question’ and would ‘provide a clear demonstration of the practical benefits of being a citizen of the Union.’ 4 The details of this right have most recently been worked out in Council Directive 2015/637 (European Council, 2015). Brexit is unlikely to have much of an effect on this right of EU citizenship, since there are very few areas of the world which have UK diplomatic or consular representation without having parallel representation from any EU member state.
Finally, the right to petition the European Parliament or initiate a Citizen’s Initiative enhances democratic legitimacy by linking the European Parliament with EU citizens. Meanwhile, the right to appeal to the ombudsman represents a direct and legally binding relationship between individual citizens and EU institutions. Again here, Brexit is likely to have little or no effect within the EU. Even some UK citizens affected by EU decisions may still be able to submit petitions or appeal to the ombudsman, on the same basis as other third country nationals—but of course only where this is related to areas of EU competence. In short, the UK’s departure from the EU will not alter citizenship or free movement in the EU, though it is traumatic for UK citizens and EU27 citizens wishing to deal with the UK, as discussed next. 5
Citizenship in the Brexit Process
Attempting to discern the rights of UK citizens in the EU and EU citizens in the UK after Brexit leads to a morass of confusion and complexity. Even the European Parliament’s report concedes that ‘Both UK and EU nationals will have to comply with the national immigration rules applying to third-country nationals, unless the EU and UK agree on specific mobility arrangements, either as part of the future relationship agreement currently being negotiated or in a subsequent agreement’ (European Parliament, 2020, p. 1)—leaving open the question of ongoing negotiations. These are not esoteric questions affecting only a few people. The European Commission’s 2020 Citizenship Report states that,
the Brexit referendum that led to the UK’s departure from the EU has had an impact on the lives of close to 3.7 million EU citizens who made their home in the UK and millions of UK citizens who lost their status of EU citizens. (European Commission, 2020a, p. 5)
Beyond this, Brexit also curtailed the rights of all UK citizens seeking to live or work in the EU27, and of EU27 citizens seeking to work in the UK.
EU laws and policies concerning free movement were most recently consolidated in Directive 2004/38. Because Directive 2004/38 no longer applies in the UK after 31 December 2020, key elements were placed in the Withdrawal Agreement. This framework is much stronger for EU nationals in the UK as they rely not on the possible continuing (or not) effect of a directive or regulation but on international commitments of the UK. Yet Appendix EU has become a massive, incomprehensible, and internally inconsistent set of rules. As one expert notes, it is difficult not to think that this is intentional; to bury EU nationals’ rights in fifty pages of verbiage will make it easier to forget those rights. 6 The likely effect of these incomprehensible and internally inconsistent rules is continuing confusion.
An investigation in January 2021 revealed that thousands of EU27 and EEA citizens living in the UK were being offered financial incentives to leave the UK ahead of the deadline to apply for so-called settled status, which would have given them rights to stay in the UK (Taylor, 2021). Under the EU Settlement Scheme, EU27 and EEA citizens who were residing in the UK before 31 December 2020 can apply for ‘settled status’ (for those who had been residing in the UK continuously for at least five years) or ‘pre-settled status’ (for those who had been residing continuously for less than five years—which could be converted to ‘settled status’ after five years of continuous residence). Settled status provides Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) under Appendix EU to the Immigration Rules (GOV.UK, 2021) and rights to work in the UK, use the National Health Service under the same conditions as previously, enrol in education or study in the UK, maintain access to public funds such as benefits and pensions, and travel in and out of the UK without losing settled status (GOV.UK, n.d.). Individuals with settled status can continue to bring in EU and third-country spouses and certain other family members (as under the pre-existing rules of EU citizenship), and any children born in the UK to individuals with settled status will automatically be British citizens. The deadline to apply for EU Settled Status was (as of this writing) 30 June 2021 and various advocates warned that many people eligible for the scheme would fall through the cracks. For example, a report entitled ‘When the Clapping Stops: EU Care Workers After Brexit’ estimated that thousands of Europeans working in the care sector were at risk of losing their status overnight, and that not only care workers but also ‘EEA+ workers in industries like construction, manufacturing, agriculture and cleaning are also at risk’ (Boswell & Patel, 2021). Continuing EU responsibilities towards EU citizens who were resident in the UK before 2021 is “an unprecedented challenge” whose effects will fall most heavily on the most vulnerable (O’Brien, 2021).
Meanwhile, after the 2016 Brexit referendum, the numbers of UK citizens seeking the nationality of EU27 member state rose dramatically. Motivated by various factors, almost always including the desire to maintain the rights of EU citizenship, thousands of UK citizens acquired the citizenship of an EU27 state (Cruise, 2020). In an ironic twist, one of the more famous applicants in the situation was the father of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who applied for French citizenship on 31 December 2020 (BBC News, 2020a). Such deep connections between UK and the remaining member states are likely to continue, as individuals with connections in both places seek status in both. Given the current confusion and contradictory goals of UK government actions, it makes sense to look at other examples of relations between the EU and proximate states.
Existing Models of Relations Between the EU and Other States
Norway and Switzerland are two of the many states which have long-established relationships with the EU and its precursors, including in the area of free movement and citizenship.
Norway
In 1959, Norway established the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) alongside Austria, Denmark, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom—collectively known as the ‘outer seven’ ringing the ‘inner six’ of the then European Economic Community (EEC). 7 While contemporary observers saw the EEC as heading towards political unification and federation, the relations with the outer seven could not be ignored: it was ‘quite evident that a solution must be found for a multilateral association of the Seven with the Six’ (Birrenbach, 1959, p. 64). Economic integration was leading distributors inside the EEC to begin dropping the products of British and other outside agencies; agreements for joint production and selling were concluded between firms in the EEC across national frontiers but excluding non-members; and ‘American investors have recently begun to prefer EEC locations over sites in the United Kingdom’—bolstering the idea that EFTA should be a ‘vigorous spur towards a broader all-European agreement’ (Kreinin, 1960, p. 370). Along these lines, Norway applied to join the Community in 1962, joining the membership applications lodged in 1961 by the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark. But the intransigence of French president Charles de Gaulle blocked the accession of the UK and other prospective member states; only De Gaulle’s resignation in 1969 allowed membership negotiations to restart. Norway planned to join the community in 1973, alongside Denmark, the United Kingdom and Ireland, but a referendum in September 1972 resulted in the ‘no’ side winning 53.5% of the vote, whereupon the government decided to stop discussions. In 1992 Norway again applied to join, but voters again rejected the proposal in a 1994 referendum, this time by a margin of 52.2% to 47.8%.
Free movement has long been a key issue for Norway, given its close historical ties particularly with Sweden and Denmark but also with other EU member states. As the European Free Trade Association website notes:
The free movement of persons is one of the core rights guaranteed in the European Economic Area (EEA), the extended Internal Market which unites all the EU Member States and three EEA EFTA States—Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. It is perhaps the most important right for individuals, as it gives citizens of the 30 EEA countries the opportunity to live, work, establish business and study in any of these countries. (EFTA, n.d.)
Furthermore, the rights to free movement also fall under the EU’s general aim of eliminating discrimination on the basis of nationality; as the website continues:
The legislation on the free movement of persons aims at eliminating all obstacles to the freedom of movement, and to give the same rights to nationals of an EEA State and their family members within the EEA by eliminating any discrimination on the basis of nationality.
And finally, the free movement regime between the EU and the three EFTA states Norway, Liechtenstein, and Iceland (Switzerland runs bilateral negotiations, as discussed in the next section) also includes coordination on social security matters and discussion of the mutual recognition of credentials and qualifications:
To complement and support the principle of the free movement of persons, the EEA Agreement also specifies the rules applicable in the fields of recognition of professional qualifications and social security coordination. Both are necessary to enable people to exercise their fundamental right to free movement effectively.
Taken together, the free movement and non-discrimination rules between the EU and Norway attempt to approximate the situation within the EU. As a group opposed to immigration into the UK summarizes the situation ‘The Norway Option means continued free movement for EU citizens’ (Migration Watch UK, 2018). In the area of border checks, too, Norway belongs to the Schengen system, along with Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland. When the Nordic EU member states—Denmark, Sweden and Finland—applied to join Schengen, Norway and Iceland also agreed to retain free travel and join Schengen (Norway, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2017). All of these aspects point to the fact that there are continuing ongoing discussions and negotiations to ensure free movement between Norway (as well as Liechtenstein and Iceland) and the EU. Similar ongoing negotiations and discussions may be expected between the UK and the EU as long as the UK stays outside the EU.
Switzerland
Switzerland is the fourth member of EFTA, but it conducts bilateral relations with the EU. In a 1992 referendum, Swiss voters rejected joining the European Economic Area (EEA) by a vote of 50.3% to 49.7%, whereupon the government suspended membership negotiations. The other three EFTA members (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) joined the internal market in 1994—working to guarantee the free movement of people, goods, services and capital, as discussed above. Meanwhile, Switzerland embarked upon negotiations that resulted in a series of treaties covering free movement of people, air traffic, road traffic, agriculture, technical trade barriers, public procurement and science (‘Bilateral I’ treaties, signed in 1999 and in effect from 1 June 2002) and subsequent treaties (‘Bilateral II’ treaties). As the council and commission made clear in 2002, the seven Bilateral I treaties
are intimately linked to one another by the requirement that they are to come into force at the same time and that they are to cease to apply at the same time, six months after the receipt of a non-renewal or denunciation notice concerning any one of them.
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The practical effect of this intimate linkage is that Switzerland effectively operates as an EEA member, contributing to the EU budget and subject to the EU rules but without a formal say in the decision-making process, quite similar to the situation of Norway and just as Brexit has resulted in the loss of the UK’s decision-making say.
In a September 2020 referendum, the populist Swiss People’s Party (SVP) proposed ending the 1999 Switzerland–EU agreement on the free movement of people, but this proposal failed by a vote of nearly 62% against (BBC News, 2020b). It was a dramatic difference from a 2014 referendum, in which the SVP proposed to limit immigration from the EU, and which passed narrowly by a vote of 50.33% to 49.67%. After lengthy negotiations, the Swiss government agreed that immigration would not be restricted, although Swiss employers were obliged to give priority to workers resident in Switzerland for job sectors with high unemployment. Switzerland joined the Schengen area in 2009 following a 2005 referendum in which 54.6% of voters backed joining Schengen. The basic point of the examples of Norway (and Iceland and Liechtenstein as fellow members of EFTA) and Switzerland is that there are existing models of constant negotiation, just as Brexit will require constant and ongoing negotiations, and that Brexit therefore can never ‘get done’ but is instead an ongoing process.
Key Current Issues Regarding Citizenship
The ongoing Brexit process started with confusion and is continuing in confusion: even the Commission’s website on citizens’ rights and the Withdrawal Agreement notes that there will be many ongoing meetings and joint reports (European Commission, 2021). As the Commission makes clear, the projections for EU citizenship are,
strongly linked to the Commission’s six headline ambitions for Europe, particularly the new push for European democracy and bringing citizens closer to the EU. It should be seen in combination with and as complementing other initiatives, such as the new strategy for strengthening the application of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and, in particular, the European Democracy Action Plan. (European Commission, 2020a, p. 5)
Below we briefly consider investor citizenship, naturalization and denaturalization, marriage and family life, Northern Ireland, and the pandemic.
Investor Citizenship
As investor citizenship plans have proliferated, the European Commission has devoted increasing attention to the issue (European Commission, 2020c). Without the UK as a member state, the EU27 may be more likely to agree common standards concerning the conditions for acquiring national citizenship, given that national citizenship automatically confers the rights of EU citizenship throughout all the member states. Current research demonstrates how high net worth individuals generally seek improved mobility rather than immigration, that the legitimacy of citizenship by investment programs such as those of Malta and Cyprus can be tested according to contract law, and that the conditions of access to membership reveal much about a society’s vision of citizenship and the power dynamics inherent in admission (Prats, 2021; Shachar, 2021; Surak, 2021). Wealth as a criterion for citizenship, long discredited in light of the ideal of political equality, is being revived (Maas, 2021). The increase in investor citizenship schemes by which wealthy individuals purchase citizenship or residency in a state is a particular challenge for the EU because citizenship in one member state grants rights in all other EU member states (Džankić, 2019), even if EU citizenship extends the scope of member state status only through the intra-EU mobility of citizens (Siklodi, 2020). As recent scholarship demonstrates, EU citizenship has not yet uploaded Europe’s political and welfare communities to the supranational level, instead privileging private property and entrepreneurial freedom for the economically active over mutual commitments and a shared political identity (Menéndez & Olsen, 2019; Olsen, 2012). The Commission’s launch in October 2020 of infringement procedures against Cyprus and Malta, and related questions to Bulgaria, about their investor citizenship programs resulted in the suspension of these programs (and a short-term frenzy among investors who rushed to meet the closure deadline), leaving open the question of future Commission action and providing further evidence of an emerging shared European governance even in an area so central to state sovereignty as decisions about who may become a citizen and under what conditions (European Commission, 2020b; Maas, 2016).
Naturalization and Denaturalization
Allowing rich people to buy citizenship is only one way in which member states may make decisions about who should acquire or lose citizenship and under what conditions. Because member state citizenship also gives all the benefits of EU citizenship, such decisions impact not only the member state in question but also all the other member states. Shortly before the entry into force of the Maastricht treaty, the European Court of Justice established that ‘it is for each member state, having due regard to community law, to lay down the conditions for the acquisition and loss of nationality’,
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which appeared to open up a role for EU institutions (to determine whether due regard had been given to community law) but at the Edinburgh Summit following the Treaty of Maastricht, the member states declared that ‘the question whether an individual possesses the nationality of a member state shall be settled solely by reference to the nationality law of the member state concerned’ (Maas, 2014, p. 415). Indeed, despite the promise of EU citizenship, limitations on the right of free movement and residence were put into sharp focus by the forced expulsion of Roma from France in the summer of 2010 (Gehring, 2013), continuing a pattern of discrimination in which supposedly equal rights to free movement are subject to practices of exclusion. As one analysis focused on Roma in Barcelona asserts, the ambiguity of a multilevel citizenship not only allows multifaceted forms of exclusion but also various forms of resistance, both within and beyond a juridical citizenship framework (Parker & López Catalán, 2014). Since then, the European Court of Justice has reiterated many times that EU citizenship is ‘destined to be the fundamental status of the nationals of the member states’, although the precise meaning of this declaration remains open to political contestation (Maas, 2016). Besides the example of investor citizenship above concerning acquisition, there are also cases of (potential) loss of nationality where there is a growing EU role in (national) citizenship policymaking. In the case of Tjebbes, for example,
the court considered that the principle of proportionality requires Member States’ legislation regulating loss of nationality to provide for the possibility of ‘an individual examination of the consequences of that loss for [the person concerned and for that of the members of his or her family] from the point of view of EU law’.
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This echoes the 2010 judgement in Rottmann, 11 where the court declared that member state decisions about naturalization and denaturalization are ‘amenable to judicial review carried out in the light of European Union law’ and the observation that, even without formal coordination, the naturalization laws and policies of the member states have converged so that the required length of residence is similar in all the member states (Maas, 2016, p. 543). Because the UK was generally more resistant to coordination, Brexit may speed up processes of coordination among the member states.
Marriage and Family Life
Of course citizenship concerns not only free movement or access to nationality but also the exercise or enjoyment of rights—and questions about harmonization (or not) of rights that may or may not be within EU competence. One example is marriage. In Coman
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the Court interpreted the concept of ‘spouse’ of an EU citizen in Article 2(2)(a) of Directive 2004/3864 and held that it is an autonomous EU law definition, independent of Member State laws. The Court ruled that where a returning EU citizen had (previously) exercised free movement rights to take up genuine residence in another EU Member State and has, in the host Member State, created or strengthened a family life with a same-sex (third-country) national through marriage lawfully concluded in the host Member State, EU law precludes national legislation refusing to grant derived entry and residence rights to the same-sex spouse of the returning EU citizen based on the non-recognition of same-sex marriage in the (home) Member State concerned. The Member State concerned must consider such person as spouse for the purposes of enabling them to exercise the rights they enjoy under EU law. At the same time, this does not require that Member State to provide, in its national law, for the institution of marriage between persons of the same sex. (European Commission, 2020c).
The question of same-sex marriage, and whether EU citizens should have rights under EU law is longstanding, and there are parallels with developments in the United States (Bierbach, 2017). Brexit may not have much of an effect on the overall political dynamics here, although the emigration of many (presumably progressive-minded) young citizens of Poland, Hungary, Romania, and more from the UK following Brexit (and even more so as a result of COVID-19) may pose a challenge to traditionalist populist narratives about the undesirability of ‘progressive’ rights. More broadly, Eurobarometer surveys point to the popularity of European rights across the EU, particularly among younger citizens, raising possibilities for greater coordination post-Brexit and possibly even for introducing EU-wide social rights such as guaranteed income and family support; a strong majority of Europeans favour harmonizing European social welfare systems (Maas, 2020a).
Northern Ireland
As the article by Katy Hayward in this special issue elucidates, the unique arrangements established through the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland in the UK–EU Withdrawal Agreement mark an innovative and ambitious development for the EU, in de facto including a region of a non-member state within its internal market for goods. Ireland and the UK are expected, as of this writing, to continue the Common Travel Area (CTA). As the article in this special issue by Oliver Schmidtke continues, free movement is also impacted. But Brexit also impacts the nature of citizenship in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This is because, in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the governments of the UK and Ireland had recognized
the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland.
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At the time the agreement was signed, the prospects for the UK leaving the EU were not considered: the UK and the Republic of Ireland signed the agreement ‘as friendly neighbours and as partners in the European Union’ (Maas, 2020a). Brexit adds an element of uncertainty and unpredictability, including the possibility of a renewed push to unite Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland.
The COVID-19 Pandemic
COVID-19 ‘shows how much Europeans have come to rely on free movement and depend on it for economic and personal reasons’ (European Commission, 2020a, p. 5). But the long-term impact of the pandemic—demographic, cultural, economic, political, and more—is uncertain, and this also affects predictions on free movement. When internal migration in federal states such as Canada, Australia, the United States, and others is subject to pandemic-related lockdowns and closed borders (cf. ‘Atlantic bubble’/New South Wales/restrictions in US, and so on), it should not come as a surprise that EU member states, too, resort to border controls and migration restrictions, including for EU citizens and even their own domestic citizens. As noted above, the pandemic worked in tandem with Brexit to cause ‘reverse brain drain’ of young citizens of many central, eastern and southern European member states who had been living and working in the UK (The Economist, 2021). Migration from the UK to other EU countries jumped from about 57,000 annually in 2008–2015 to over 73,000 annually in 2016–2018, with Spain and France seeing the largest number of UK arrivals (Auer & Tetlow, 2020). As of this writing, the pandemic is only accelerating this trend, though it is difficult to assess the relative impact of the pandemic and the decision of the British government, discussed above, to offer financial incentives to thousands of EU27 and EEA citizens to leave the UK ahead of the deadline to apply for so-called settled status (Bubola, 2021).
Conclusion
In the long run, European citizenship may be affected more by the COVID-19 pandemic than by the Brexit process, despite considerable ongoing uncertainty about the negotiations necessary post-Brexit. This is not even considering the possibility of a vote for independence in Scotland, or a vote for reunification of Ireland, or other large-scale political geographic developments, which the Brexit process (as of this writing) appears to make more likely. The UK’s relationship with the EU may well follow precedents established by other non-EU European states, such as Norway or Switzerland. Or the relationship may chart a new path recognizing the already-existing integration of millions of EU27 citizens in the UK and millions more UK citizens in the EU. Yet a lasting impact of the UK’s departure from the EU—at least until such time as a future UK government may reapply for membership and the UK rejoins the EU—is the absence of UK decision-makers in deciding the future development of EU citizenship. The historical experience, in which successive UK governments were among the most recalcitrant and resistant to developing the rights of EU citizenship, suggests that the coming years of EU citizenship legislation may lean towards a more integrative approach, in which common EU rights develop in importance relative to member state-based rights. Complicating this prediction, however, is the pandemic—because it is having unanticipated demographic, migratory and political effects. Will the pandemic-induced (and Brexit-induced; but more the former than the latter) return home of millions of citizens from central, eastern and southern Europe be lasting? Will the move towards telecommuting and migrations out of expensive cities towards less expensive smaller towns and rural areas continue or be reversed post-pandemic? 14 Will the EU focus on consolidating democracy not only in the western Balkans but also in existing member states such as Hungary and Poland succeed in light of generational changes and evolving public opinion in those states and among citizens who have gradually gotten used to their rights as European citizens? Only time will tell.
