Today, Theresa May finally revealed the UK Government’s counter-proposal regarding the rights of EU citizens in the UK to the essential principles published by the EU27 two weeks ago. According to George Osborne, she was the only Cabinet member to have prevented this commitment being made unilaterally a year ago.
So how do the two positions compare? At first sight, the UK position is more detailed (22 pages vs 4). However, the UK position contains quite a lot of waffle while the EU27 position is a series of bullet points.
For example, paragraphs 1-4 and 12 of the 12-paragraph summary in the UK position appear to be aimed more at a domestic audience than at the EU27.
It is also strange that the UK position seems to have been drafted without any awareness of the EU27 position. See, for example, the opening of paragraph 6: “The Government undertakes to treat EU citizens in the UK according to the principles below, in the expectation that the EU will offer reciprocal treatment for UK nationals resident in its member states.”
In case you want to contribute to a crowd-sourced comparison of the two positions, please comment below or send me a direct message via Twitter to receive access to the Google Doc I have started.
