On Wednesday 6 February,
representatives of EuroCitizens met
civil servants from the Foreign Ministry,
the Interior Ministry and Presidencia. A law (decreto ley)
with full details to enable measures to be put into place in the event of a
hard Brexit will not be passed until the beginning of March. However, we
received clarification about key points of the Spanish government’s no-deal
plans for British residents in Spain. The government aims to make our
transition from EU citizens to third-country nationals as simple as possible,
though everything will be conditional on reciprocity and the UK government's
treatment of Spanish citizens in the UK.
1. A generous 'period of grace' for registration
Sufficient time will be
given, in the event of a hard Brexit, for UK residents to register as third-country
nationals. The length of this 'transition' period is not definite
yet, but it will be sufficient and will also depend on the effective date on
which the UK leaves the EU.
2.
How to register as a third-country national
a) Information for registered Britons:
After
29/03/19 your existing EU document (your registration certificate or residence card
as a family member of an EU citizen) will
continue to be valid until the end of the period of grace even though you are no longer an EU citizen. During this period, you will have to apply for new
third-country ID, a Tarjeta de
Identificación de Extranjeros (TIE). The procedure for granting this new
status will be ‘practically automatic’ for legally resident UK citizens. Both
the long transition period and the simplified nature of the process are similar to the
contingency measures of other EU 27 countries which is promising, though we will need to see all the details: the
application form, the cost, help provided for vulnerable groups etc. Our
interlocutors at the ministries also promised that extra resources would be
dedicated to immigration staff (at oficinas
de extranjería and comisarias) in provinces with large British populations.
b) Information
for non-registered
Britons resident before Brexit:
If you and
all your family members are not yet registered, eg if you have recently arrived,
you should immediately apply at a
foreigner’s office (oficina de
extranjería) or police station (comisaría)
for an EU citizen's resident document.
If
you have been unable to formally submit your application or have not been given
an appointment before the withdrawal date, eg, your appointment is given after
that date, there will be a specific process for applying for the new
third-country ID during the period of grace, as long as you can prove that you were
residing in Spain before the 29 March.
So to sum up:
- If you apply for your EU citizen's resident document
before 29 March (or the effective date on which the UK leaves the EU), your application will be considered under the same
conditions as current legal UK residents.
- If you are resident but have been unable to formally
apply for an EU citizen's resident document before 29 March (or the effective
date on which the UK leaves the UE), you will have to apply directly for the
new third-country ID during the period of grace. However, the requirements stipulated
by the new law, (that enables no-deal Brexit measures in Spain), will be
similar to those for an EU citizen. Your application will be processed through
a specific process which will be less demanding than the general residence process
for all other third-country nationals.
In all of the above situations, during the period of
grace, your residence in Spain will be considered legal.
c) Britons arriving in Spain after
Brexit day:
Applications for
people arriving after 29 March will be processed in the same way as those for all
other third-country nationals, with the corresponding requirements which are
considerably more demanding than those for EU citizens, especially for
non-working people. It is also important to point out that, if the UK leaves
the EU with no agreement, British citizens who are not registered as residents will,
like all other third-country nationals, only be allowed to spend 90 days in any
one six-month period and that their exit and entry will be controlled at ports
and airports to enforce this.
3. New documentation
Your new ID card (TIE) will be
biometric and will be valid throughout Spain and for travel within the EU-27
along with a passport. The document will accredit your status as
legally-resident third-country nationals (under the régimen general de extranjeros as opposed to our current situation
under the régimen de ciudadanos de la UE).
If you have more than five years of legal residence, you will be able to get long-term
residence (residencia de larga duración).
If you have less than five years legal residence, you will be able to apply, under
the same conditions, for long-term residence after Brexit once you have
completed five years residence.
4.
Working after Brexit
If you are employed (por cuenta ajena) or self-employed (por cuenta propia), you will be able to
continue working as now. If you have exercised a profession using UK
qualifications before 29/03/19, you will be able to continue to do so. If you
are a Spanish civil servant (funcionario)
with British nationality, you will be able to continue your employment even
though you are no longer an EU citizen.
5.
Social security coordination
On 30 March, automatic
coordination of social security between the UK and the EU will end. Thus there
will have to be a new bilateral agreement covering this area between Spain and
the UK or between de the EU
and the UK. This would enable existing social security rights and
aggregated pensions to be recognised for Spaniards in the UK and Britons in
Spain.
6.
Healthcare
The existing S1 scheme and EHIC card will also stop automatically in the event of a hard
Brexit. A new agreement between Spain and the UK will have to be reached which
reflects the true costs of the healthcare for the roughly 77,000 British UK
pensioners in Spain compared with the mere hundreds of Spanish pensioners in
Britain (to maintain access
to public health for UK nationals as now).
Conclusion
One of the most difficult things to deal with
for UK residents since the Brexit vote has been the lack of certainty about our
futures. Now at least we know that, despite a Brexit cliff-edge, in Spain there
will be a lengthy transition period and potentially simple administrative
procedures to enable us to bridge the sad transition from European citizens to
third-country nationals. We would like to thank again the civil servants who
met us on 6 February, worked with us on this document and indeed who have engaged fully with us since the
triggering of Article 50 nearly two years ago.
See below the document we sent to the MAEC before our meeting on February 6.
A Conservative MP, Alberto Costa, is proposing an amendment to the
motion being voted on in the House of Commons next Wednesday 27th Feb.
The amendment (see below) calls for the Prime Minister to ask the EU to
jointly agree *as soon as possible* to adopt the citizens' rights part
of the Withdrawal Agreement - whatever happens with Brexit.
