Tag Archives: european citizenship

Stuart Bonar

EU citizenship?

By Stuart Bonar | Thu 10th November 2016 - 3:00 pm

 

Since the vote to leave the European Union back in June, many of my friends have suddenly developed a keen interest in their Irish ancestry. Others have already bagged a German passport, a Cypriot passport, and permanent residency in Belgium. Everywhere, anyone with a parent or grandparent from elsewhere in Europe is clambering aboard a lifeboat out of Brexit Britain. Some of us however aren’t able to contribute to the big, post-referendum spike in applications to become new Danes, Italians and Swedes.

I was giving this a lot of thought last month. Sure, I want to keep my right to live, work, travel, study, retire, even start a business across the EU with the minimum of bureaucratic fuss and bother, but it’s more than that. I am a European. I feel it in my bones. I don’t want my EU citizenship ripped from my hands. I want to keep it.

A thought popped into my head. A solution that would allow those who wanted to leave to do so, whilst allowing those who feel they are EU citizens as much as British citizens to remain.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | 36 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • cim
    Agreed with a lot of the above, "compulsory voting" is just a way to mask the symptom that there's not much in our current democracy that gets people excited to...
  • SteveTrevethan
    Thanks to all for a most interesting and relevant article and set of comments! From the information and possibilities therein contained, is it the case that ...
  • David Evans
    Let's be honest here. The whole thing is a political carve up, by an instinctively centralising and authoritarian Labour party, emboldened by a huge parliament...
  • George Thomas
    Perhaps my most illiberal "opinion" is that automatic freedom of movement for immigrants is possibly a bad thing*. I remember speaking with a recent refugee who...
  • Chloe
    'underlying emotions are fear, resentment and inadequacy relating to their own lives' Are you saying the residents of Crowborough or Bicester who've protested ...