Open Letter to Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker

The willingness of the conservative leadership, and Theresa May as the new Prime Minister in particular, to use the lives of European citizens working and living in the UK, our lives, as bargaining chips in the coming negotiations with the EU is utterly disgusting.

We are over 2.9 million European citizens who freely chose to uproot ourselves from our countries of origin, to come to the United Kingdom and contribute to what we saw was the cradle of a tolerant, open and embracing society. Our hope was to make an even greater Britain, that would shine the light of a rational, multicultural and tolerant example in an increasingly radicalised world.

The result of the referendum has been seen by some as a chance to take back control of their country and by others as a generational tragedy. However you sit on this ever widening divide, what we cannot fail to overlook is that in the midst of all this, the UK governement is using the lives of EU nationals as strategic hostages, threatening the EU and pushing them into a weaker position in the negotiations that will take place once Article 50 of the Lisbon Agreement is activated.

Some may argue, but what about the millions of UK nationals in European countries? Well, they are equally threatened and they are equally thrown in this upheaval, but I would argue that whereas the UK has clearly indicated their intent on using our lives as bargaining chips, many European Countries have started to unilaterally take measures and reassure the UK nationals that their presence in their adopted countries will continue regardless of the outcome of the negotiations.

It is not too late to make amends.

I would ask the politicians in the country, all of them regardless of your political ideology, to stand up against this, an act that devalues the achievements made by your forefathers, taints your historical record in defending the rights of people against oppression and erases any hope of a future legacy to be proud of.

That being said, I also reject the notion that we can be unwillingly used against the interests of the European Union we belong to, and in order to do so I ask the European Commission representatives in future talks with the UK to refuse to accept any agreement or grant any concession that hinges in the UK government’s treatment of UE nationals living in the United Kingdom. We are EU citizens, we will weather the storm ahead and if need be, we will go back to mainland Europe but we would not like to be the cause of a disadvantageous agreement between the UK and the EU.

The UK has now the opportunity to define what kind of relationship it wants with the European Union, paraphrasing the fictional PM in Love Actually:

I fear that this has become a bad relationship. A relationship based on Britain taking exactly what it wants and casually ignoring all those things that really matter to, erm… the European Union… …a friend who bullies us is no longer a friend.”