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Comment by whack | Hacker News Reader

Would have liked to see a bit more nuance in the article. "European Union citizens have the right to free movement, settlement and employment across the EU."

I can understand exceptions being made for British citizens who have been living in the continent for many years. However, it hardly seems fair for all British citizens to be granted free employment/settlement rights in EU states, when other EU citizens aren't afforded the same rights in Britain.

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If British citizens have been living in EU countries for many years, in most cases I believe they're eligible to apply as citizens of those EU countries. In certain cases (such as in the OP article), the Netherlands often requires one to renounce[1] current nationalities after qualifying for naturalization[2].

As a counterexample, France[3] and Germany[4] tend to allow citizenship via naturalization after 5-8 years and do not require one to give up other nationalities. There's also the (mostly implemented?[5]) EU blue card program[6] that UK citizens could apply to obtain permanent residence in EU countries.

[1] https://ind.nl/en/Pages/Renouncing-your-current-nationality....

[2] https://ind.nl/en/dutch-citizenship/Pages/Naturalisation.asp...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_nationality_law#French_...

[4] https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/faqs/EN/themen/migration/...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Card_(European_Union)#Imp...

[6] http://www.eu-bluecard.com/

That would never fly anyway. The EU insists on reciprocity — although negotiations can take time. For instance the US is the last non-reciprotal country on the visa-free list.

And EU citizens get their citizenship through the national one, cf Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union Article 20:

> Citizenship of the Union is hereby established. Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the Union shall be additional to and not replace national citizenship.

Of note, EU citizenship is a subset of national citizenship as countries get to decide who is or is not a "national" member.

This distinction is mostly visible for overseas territories e.g. Greenland and the Faroe Islands are both part of the Kingdom of Denmark but both outside the EU, yet Greenlanders are EU Citizens while Faroese are not.

You are obviously right.

But it has to be mentioned that some times courts rule in ways different than what is fair. In law some times you have two things which you want to hold true simultaneously, something along the lines of 1) people have the right to move freely between member states, and 2) people should have the right to expectation that their lives won't be derailed by high-level disagreements between states. Some times these truths (which are most often aligned), contradict each other in some edge case scenario (like brexit). Solving this usually means that a court will decide that one truth is more important than the other, and predicting these outcomes seems almost impossible to me as a non-law person.

So while I completely agree with you, to me it's far from obvious what the outcome here will be.

100% on.

> I can understand exceptions being made for British citizens > who have been living in the continent for many years.

As far as I know this is a given already.

> However, it hardly seems fair for all British citizens to > be granted free employment/settlement rights in EU states, > when other EU citizens aren't afforded the same rights in > Britain.

This is also obvious.

I am not sure but the article may miss the point. Having a lock at Dutch citizenship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_nationality_law#Dual_cit...

So if you are a UK national living in the Netherlands it will be tricky to have dual citizenship. So assuming that you keep your UK citizenship your residency rights will be "grandfathered". Now a problem arises after the Brexit if such a UK national with residency in the Netherlands wants to retire in Spain - a place where he/she holds no residency rights.

As an EU citizen I would have no issue granting free movement to British Citizen even after Brexit. The British are valuable for Europe both economically and culturally and I don't see why a bunch of Xenophobes should be allowed to punish all Brits, including those who are curious and adventurous and wishes to live and work in other parts of Europe.

As an EU citizen, I would not accept granting free movement to British citizens unless I be granted free movement through the UK borders.

I do not want a one-way street where I am given the shorter stick.

It is not like the British citizens were a voiceless majority led by a xenophobic minority: they voted and the majority spoke.

Well, you as an individual would be given the shorter stick, I can see that. But I feel Europe as a whole would be richer for it, just as Britain have benefitted from immigration (despite their refusal to acknowledge this). In addition, as certain elements in Britain hijacks the process and tries to distance Britain more from the EU than even the Brexit vote mandates, showing the British people that we still consider them part of us, despite the shortcomings of their government would be better than play the eye for an eye game. In addition I feel it would facilitate Britain rejoining the EU which I hope happens sooner rather than later.

I can understand why you would not share this view though.

Immigration is an entirely different subject.

British citizens are very welcome to immigrate to the EU, and commit, and get citizenship.

I wouldn't call 37.4% of the electorate a majority.

I used to think like you. But at the same time, we EU citizens also have to fight for things which are good to us, like the right to visit the UK. As the UK departs, they're making it us vs them. So if the EU has to make threats on derailing some of "them" lives to benefit some of "us", I'm for it.

The Brexiteers don't actually want to stop EU citizens visiting the UK, they want to stop them having the automatic right to settle and work in the UK and gain UK benefits. This is the crux of it.

I'm an anti-Bexit Brit and have benefited hugely from the right to work elsewhere in the EU and travel throughout the EU without a visa. Several of my employers probably would not have been based in London without that right, they'd have been based in Paris or Berlin. It's crazy to me that we're putting that in jeopardy.

However I don't think this will affect current EU citizen residents in the UK, or UK citizens currently resident in the EU. From what I've read, both the UK government and EU leaders are agreed that existing residents should have their current rights grandfathered in.

I wish you were right. However, read this comment elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16492116

I can't speak for the accuracy of that comment though.

Its a two way street - UK must allow the same for EU citizens.

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