The Guardian — British citizens should be able to keep various benefits of EU membership including freedom of movement after Brexit, the European parliament’s chief negotiator has said.
Guy Verhofstadt said Britons could be allowed to keep certain rights if they applied for them on an individual basis. “All British citizens today have also EU citizenship. That means a number of things: the possibility to participate in the European elections, the freedom of travel without problem inside the union.
“We need to have an arrangement in which this arrangement can continue for those citizens who on an individual basis are requesting it.”
Verhofstadt made the comments as European leaders meet in Brussels for the EU spring summit. He warned that the European parliament was committed to ensuring countries outside the union did not have a better deal than those within it, BBC 5 Live reported.
Verhofstadt has previously said the EU needs to be “open and generous” to individual UK citizens and said politicians were considering how to allow them to maintain their ties to the continent.
He told an audience at Chatham House in January: “We are scrutinising, thinking, debating how we could achieve that … that individual UK citizens would think their links with Europe are not broken.”
