Yahoo News European Union demands indefinite right to remain for unborn children of EU nationals in UK
European Union bureaucrats are demanding that “current and future family members” of European nationals in the UK should have an open-ended right to settle in this country after Brexit.
They also want Britain to continue to agree to pay the pension costs of Brussels bureaucrats after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019.
The demands are made in two negotiating papers which have been published by the EU ahead of formal Brexit talks starting on June 19, just 11 days after next Thursday's general election.
Theresa May, the Prime Minister, will today condemn them as “aggressive” and stress that she is better placed to negotiate Britain’s exit from the EU.
The document, titled “Essential Principles on Citizens’ Rights” says that “family members … will join the holder of the right at any point after the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement”.
It then adds that this will apply to “current and future family members”, which makes the commitment potentially open-ended over generations for decades.
EU nationals will also receive an identity document giving them, their wives and husbands and children the right to remain in the UK.
Another document, entitled “Essential Principles on Financial Settlement”, sets out the scale of the bill the EU wants Britain to pay to leave the EU.
It lists 74 different EU bodies which it wants Britain to pay its share of funding, including the European Commission, the European Standards Agency and the EU Council.
The final bill should be paid in euros, it says, adding that the “financial settlement should be based on the principle that the United Kingdom must honour its share of the financing of all the obligations undertaken while it was a member of the Union.
“The United Kingdom obligations should be fixed as a percentage of the EU obligations calculated at the date of withdrawal in accordance with a methodology to be agreed in the first phase of the negotiations”.
The bill should also take into “pensions and other employee benefits” of staff at the EU institutions.
Mrs May will use the demands to try to convince voters that she is better placed than her Labour rival Jeremy Corbyn to negotiate Britain’s exit from the EU.
Mrs May is expected to say today: “The European Commission has shown the importance of the choice faced by the British public next week.
“They are adopting an aggressive negotiating position, which can only be met by strong leadership on behalf of Britain. “Jeremy Corbyn is in no position to provide that kind of leadership. He has no plan to deliver Brexit, and he has already admitted he would give control of our borders and control of our laws back to Brussels. “The Brexit negotiations are due to begin only eleven days after polling day.
“If I lose just six seats, Jeremy Corbyn could become Prime Minister at the head of a coalition of chaos, with the parties still arguing among themselves rather than negotiating for Britain.”
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