“OF THOSE British expats in this room, how many are considering applying for German citizenship?” comes a voice from the crowd. Nervous laughter ripples around the packed basement bar near the Reichstag in Berlin, then most of those present raise a hand. “We keep on being asked about that,” responds Jon Worth, the British Berliner hosting this meeting for expatriates worried about Brexit. “It’s become a matter of the head rather than the heart. If having a German passport makes it easier to stay here, then it’s a no-brainer to apply.”
That is a measure of the uncertainty among Britain’s continental expats, estimated by the UN to number about 1.3m. Questions for a panel of experts at the event—including a Briton who recently obtained a German passport, partly as insurance against Brexit—are detailed and urgent. When would postal votes be sent out? Would self-employed Britons have to apply for a German work permit after Brexit? “At the moment we have plenty of questions, but far too few answers,” observes Mr Worth, who has organised similarly popular gatherings in Hamburg and Cologne (others have followed in Munich and Copenhagen).
The confusion comes in two varieties. The first, more immediate sort concerns the mechanics of voting in the referendum. Unlike, say, the Netherlands, Britain has no central office recording where expats are, sending out ballots, then collecting and distributing them to the right local authorities in time. It shows. British embassies have publicised the wrong deadline for registration (the correct one is June 7th); postal votes have been sent abroad with too little postage; expat voter details have been mislaid by local councils. Small wonder that, of the roughly 5m Britons around the world, only about 200,000 are registered.
Then there is the more long-term source of uncertainty: what would Brexit mean for Britons on the continent? As the Leave and Remain campaigns have traded lurid claims—comparing the EU to Hitler, claiming that a vote for Brexit would embolden Islamic State—the practical implications for the hundreds of thousands of expats in other EU states have been largely ignored. The Leave campaign, in particular, belittles them and their livelihoods with its assertions (breathtaking in their misplaced breeziness) that they “have nothing to fear” from Britain leaving the EU.
Brexiteers point to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, under which “vested” (acquired) rights are deemed to outlive the treaty conferring them. They note it applied when Greenland withdrew from the EU in 1985. Yet there is no certainty about how it would be interpreted in Britain’s case. Lawyers retort that the convention refers to state rights, not individual ones, so offers no post-Brexit guarantee of a Briton’s freedom to reside, work, trade and use public services in another EU country. The convention is not mentioned in Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty (which codifies the process of leaving the union), nor is France even a signatory. On June 1st Spain’s prime minister warned that leaving the EU could cost Britons the right to live and work in his country. And the Greenland precedent? “Scarcely relevant,” says a House of Commons report, because of the tiny number involved.
That means protections for expats need to be secured as part of Britain’s exit negotiations. But will they be? If the country sought an arrangement similar to Norway’s, whereby it kept the trade benefits of EU membership in exchange for preserving freedom of movement, this might well be possible. But the Leave campaign is increasingly defining a pro-Brexit vote on June 23rd as a mandate for a draconian clamp-down: on June 1st Vote Leave, the official Out campaign, proposed slamming the door on all EU citizens except those with particular skills. If this happened, reciprocal restrictions would presumably apply to Britons planning to move to the continent. How it would affect those who have already done so is unclear. In the event of Brexit, European leaders are likely to try to discourage copycats by pointedly restricting the full benefits of EU citizenship to full EU citizens.
Don’t let’s be beastly to the Anglo-Germans
All this is part of a wider story: Britain tends to disregard its diaspora. The country limits its expats’ voting rights (which are withdrawn after 15 years abroad) and certain welfare payments. It freezes their pensions and makes relatively little effort to find out where they are, what they are doing or even how many of them exist. And this in a technological age when other governments are going to new lengths to engage their emigrants. Ireland is building a giant database of its diaspora, to help nurture and woo it; New Zealand runs a social network for far-flung Kiwis. Mexico, India and China see their emigrants as soft-power warriors and try to lure high-flyers, with their international experience and connections, back home. France and Italy both have overseas parliamentary constituencies and let their expats vote in embassies.
Overlooked and poorly represented, perhaps Britain’s expats can blame their image problem. In the popular imagination at home they are the bacon-and-eggs brigade: witness “Benidorm”, a cheesy television comedy about ageing, lobster-skinned dipsomaniacs on the Spanish Costas. Yet why should such Britons, many of whom have paid into the welfare state for decades before moving abroad, be treated as second-class citizens?
And in any case the profile of the British diaspora is evolving: improvements in technology, cheap travel and the high cost of living in Britain are propelling highly skilled workers overseas in search of opportunities. Statistics show that British emigrants are increasingly likely to be university-educated and to hold a professional job. Thus the typical expat is becoming more like those scientists, entrepreneurs and lawyers with whom Bagehot mingled in Berlin. Such folk are not deserters. They are stimulants to trade, promoters of British culture and values, and vessels of worldly contacts and knowledge. All of which Britain will need more than ever if, on June 23rd, it votes for Brexit.
Economist.com/blogs/bagehot