Our Managing Partner, León Fernando del Canto, has published an article on the British magazine Money Observer, entitled “British expats facing ‘green card’ procedures in EU“, in which he analyses the British expats’ situation after Brexit with regard to their visa residences in the EU’s countries.
The British exit from the EU will imply complex and arduous negotiations with Brussels when the Article 50 EUT is activated, and this will have an effect on all levels. In the case of British expats (foreign workers and pensioners), one of the main topics is the visa application procedures and its new legal framework.
León Fernando del Canto highlights three options, the first one being that the Brexpats will enjoy the same visa application procedure as the EU residents from non-EU countries. This model could be inspired to the US one (green card) or the Australian one (blue card).
The second option is to engage two-tiered negotiations: where the EU and its institutions get a similar procedure than the one applied to Switzerland and every State members to maintain the each status quo.
The third and last one option is to start from the scratch to negotiate a new visa system. That would be for Del Canto the less desirable and most uncertain option because it would totally depend on the whole British expats’ situation from the adopted agreements by the United Kingdom in both the EU and each State member, that is to say, from negotiations that have still not started and in which no one knows what is going to happen yet.
Finally, with regard to Brexpats in our country, León Fernando del Canto urges the British government to #EmbraceSpain, which means, to “engage sooner in bilateral negotiations with specific countries, and in particular, to embrace a dialogue with Spain to ensure Brexpats’ rights are protected and secured for the future”.
