Another day and another “that can’t possibly be true, can it?” Brexit moment.
This morning I read this in The Guardian, quoting Helena Kennedy and the House of Lords work on the rights of EU citizens to stay in the UK post-Brexit. The piece contains this line:
People living in the UK for more than five years may not be eligible for permanent residency because of the little-known requirement for students and non-workers to have private healthcare.
Private healthcare? Come on, you just register with the NHS. That’s what universities like UCL advise their EU-EEA students to do.
So while the NHS is sufficient if, well, you know, you actually want healthcare, it is not sufficient to be classed as
comprehensive sickness insurance (CSIC) under Article 7 of Directive 2004/38/EC on the right of citizens of the Union and their family members to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States (PDF here). Colin Yeo has a detailed write up of why that is the case here – with plenty of practical tips, and how – if you are a student or not in employment – as an EU citizen in the UK you can get such insurance.
All this depends on a Court of Appeal case known as Ahmad, the judgment of which can be found here (thanks Jonathan Kingham on Twitter). The important conclusion is point 71:
71. So Mrs Ahmad had to have CSIC while she was a student. This condition must be strictly complied with. The fact that she would be entitled to treatment under the NHS, and was thus at all times in substantially the same position as she would have been had she had CSIC, is nothing to the point. Her failure to take out CSIC put the host state at risk of having to pay for healthcare at a time when the Ahmads had not then achieved the status of permanent resident and she was not economically active.
But the devil is in the detail. Mrs Ahmad is a Danish citizen, and the UK has a healthcare costs waiver with Denmark – we know that thanks to a PQ from Labour MP John Mann (table at the bottom here). The waiver, as I understood it when I lived in Denmark, was simply because it was administratively easier than establishing a payment system, not that this was intended to deny people rights. I also find it odd that how this system works was not examined in the case. Also one could also I suppose conclude that were Ahmad, say, a French citizen – a country with which a mutual recuperation of costs system exists – the outcome of the case might have been different.
So while the case law looks pretty damned bad for now, I do wonder whether this interpretation of Article 7 of 2004/38/EC would stand up to scrutiny in the European Court of Justice. Plus as this issue is causing major headaches for EU citizens in the UK at the moment (as The Guardian documents here) it’s high time there was more clarity on this issue before Brexit actually might legally happen.
Definition: The tendency to overemphasize internal explanations for the behavior of others, while failing to take into account the power of the situation. The student who says, “Brian got an A on his English paper because he is smarter than I am” instead of “Brian got an A on his English because he visited the Writing Center before he turned it in” suffers from the Fundamental Attribution Error.
The whole Brexit scenario is turning Kafkaesque isn’t it? Small print that no-one knows about being used to deny residency is like the worst stories about insurance companies. It certainly isn’t how you would expect a sovereign government to behave. Unfortunately the people affected by the decision to leave the EU (both British and European – I guess I can differentiate? ) don’t seem to factor into anyone’s thinking.
These stories are becoming more common and unfortunately they probably will get worse before getting better.
I’m hearing more and more sad stories of EU citizens living long term in the U.K. that were studying, self employed, caring for dependents, etc, that were oblivious to the requirements for CSIC and now unable to apply for permanent residency.
I’m hearing more and more sad stories of EU citizens living long term in the U.K. that were studying, self employed, caring for dependents, etc, that were oblivious to the requirements for CSIC and now unable to apply for permanent residency. It seems particularly unfair on EU citizens married to U.K. citizens that they are not able to be classed as a dependent of their partner in the same way that an EU worker applying for U.K. residency for their whole family would. There are some really sad stories particularly relating to EU spouses caring for terminally ill UK partners that, as things stand, won’t qualify for permanent residency to continue caring for their partner after Brexit or to continue living in the U.K. after their partner dies. Particularly poignant to those with British children and whose whole lives are now based in the U.K. Something surely must be done about it? It’s one more in a growing list of travesties and losses of rights that all but the most informed immigration specialists would have been aware of before the referendum.
Think there are aspects of my earlier reply that I don’t think are strictly correct, particularly regarding carers. I’ve edited it…
I’m hearing more and more sad stories of EU citizens living long term in the U.K. that were studying, supported by a partner, bringing up children etc, that were oblivious to the requirements for CSI and are now unable to apply for permanent residency. It seems particularly unfair on EU citizens married to UK citizens that they are not able to be sponsored by their British spouse or civil partner in the same way that an EU citizen that has excercised their Treaty Rights in the UK for 5 years can sponsor their family/dependents. Even though there is growing awareness of the requirement for EU students and those supporting themselves to have or have had CSI, there doesn’t seem to be a consensus as to what ‘Comprehensive Sickness Insurance’ actually is, or even if it is available! It seems to have become a trap and is being used by the Home Office to prevent many EU citizens that would otherwise comply with permanent residency requirements, from being able to apply. It’s one more in a growing list of travesties and losses of rights that all but the most informed immigration specialists would have been aware of before the referendum. The following petition calls for changes to the legislation relating to permanent residency applications and requirements for CSI. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/172343