Theresa May has been told she will have to guarantee a reciprocal deal for eastern Europeans if she wants Britons to have the chance to individually apply for EU rights such as freedom of movement after the UK leaves the bloc.

Diplomats and senior politicians from eastern European states said they would only support a plan to allow British citizens to apply for EU membership benefits if the UK offered their citizens the chance to apply for similar rights from the British government.



Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s Brexit point-man for the coming negotiations, has said he hopes to persuade European leaders to allow Britons to apply to keep certain rights.

Sources close to Verhofstadt said that the European commission’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, was considering making such a “symbolic offer” by offering Britain the option during the negotiations.

However it is understood that Barnier’s priority is to protect the rights of EU citizens already in the UK and British nationals already living in the rest of the EU. He is also determined that all rights given to British nationals are reciprocated by the British government in respect of EU nationals.

The Bulgarian ambassador to the EU, Dimiter Tzantchev, told the Guardian that his government could only accept an arrangement that treated British and Bulgarian citizens equally.

He said: “If British citizens keep their right of free movement to the EU after Brexit, then the right of free movement to the UK for all the citizens of the EU should be preserved.”

The Lithuanian MEP Petras Auštrevičius said he agreed with the Bulgarian ambassador. “I would offer British citizens the rights that Guy Verhofstadt is talking about but it must be reciprocal,” he said. “I believe to act in this way we might achieve a very good agreement.”

Verhofstadt has said that he wants an arrangement to allow EU membership rights to continue “for those citizens who on an individual basis are requesting it”.

Guy Verhofstadt. Photograph: Sander de Wilde

The former Belgian prime minister, who is working closely with Barnier ahead of the article 50 talks, claims to have received more than 1,000 letters from British citizens who do not want to lose their relationship with “European civilisation”. He criticised the remain campaign for speaking “only about economics” rather than highlighting voters’ emotional connection to the continent. He said some Britons felt they would be losing a part of their identity by having their EU citizenship taken away.

EU and UK citizens “cannot be the victim of the political games we have seen”, Verhofstadt said on Friday in an interview with the BBC.

The Dutch MEP Hans van Baalen, the president of the liberal pan-European ALDE group, which counts seven sitting prime ministers as members, told the Guardian he hoped the idea would be taken seriously by Barnier. “I have received correspondence from thousands of affected citizens about this idea, and so hope that when it is raised it will be treated with an open mind,” he said.

“We urge the negotiating parties to pursue a prudent and pragmatic approach so that a balanced deal for both the EU and the UK can be reached that does not introduce any unnecessary barriers to trade and mobility and which ensures that a strong partnership remains post-Brexit.”

The Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said his party supported Verhofstadt’s suggestion, and would be encouraging the UK to seek an agreement upon it during the talks. He said: “This proposal could be a game changer for all those people who feel they’ve been robbed of their identity by the Brexit result.”



Some academics are already planning to leave the UK in the face of uncertainty on their rights after Brexit, university leaders have claimed. The government’s promises over EU citizens being able to remain in Britain have not provided reassurance, the heads of dozens of Oxford colleges said. In a letter to the Times, the leaders wrote of their “real and immediate concerns”.

They said: “Our EU colleagues are not reassured by a government which tells them that deportation is not going to happen but declines to convert that assurance into law; some are worried, some are desperate, some are already making plans to leave.”

They added: “Many of our staff don’t know whether absences abroad on research contracts will count against them. Others do not know, however longstanding their work and residence, whether their children will be able to remain in the UK.”

A petition calling on the EU to offer British citizens the opportunity to apply individually for EU rights has now attained 300,000 signatures.

But there is considerable doubt among senior figures in Brussels about the practicality of the proposal, with EU insiders pointing to vast political, legal and technical hurdles.

The EU’s 27 remaining member states would have to rewrite treaties, which governments have repeatedly ruled out doing in recent years. Senior diplomats in the commission have also said they cannot see it being workable, although a symbolic offer to the UK could put May into an embarrassing position by forcing her to reject an arrangement of which many UK citizens would approve.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that May could trigger article 50, the formal process for leaving the EU, as early as Tuesday if the Brexit bill passes on Monday.



The article 50 legislation, which passed through the House of Commons unamended, is due to be debated by MPs on Monday. They will have to decide whether to accept a pair of amendments added by peers – on the rights of EU citizens and granting parliament a meaningful vote at the end of the process.

The EU has said it will respond to the triggering of article 50 within 48 hours of receiving a letter of notification from the prime minister, although the EU27 will not agree on its negotiating position until April at the earliest.