Crime checks on migrants by UK a breach of privacy, says EU

THE European Union wants to bar Britain from conducting criminal record checks on EU migrants living in the UK because it would “breach their privacy”.

The European Parliament issued a statement yesterday demanding that the UK take its proposal to perform criminal records checks on the three million EU citizens in the UK after Brexit “off the table”, describing them as “intrusive to people’s privacy”.

British Brexit negotiators have told the EU that ministers believe it is “not unreasonable” that EU citizens should be subject to criminal records checks before being granted “settled status” in the UK.

The statement by the European Parliament’s Brexit steering group highlighted several key differences from last week’s talks in Brussels which were the first substantive negotiations between both sides.

Chaired by Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian prime minister, the group also insisted any divorce deal must be policed by the European Court of Justice – a position ruled out again yesterday by David Davis, the Brexit secretary.

“The European Parliament wants the Withdrawal Agreement to be directly enforceable and with a mechanism in which the European Court of Justice can play its full role,” said the EU statement.

Mr Davis voiced British frustration yesterday at the EU’S insistence that the British courts could not be trusted to implement the terms of the divorce deal, which will also be a legally binding international treaty.

After meeting the Czech foreign minister in Prague, Mr Davis said there was a “moral imperative” to do a rapid deal on citizens’ rights that would provide certainty for expats on both sides of the Channel.

But he said Britain was not willing to give the right to the EU court to become an ultimate arbiter. “When, for example, we strike a deal, let’s say, with the United States we don’t give the United States’ Supreme Court rights in Britain to enforce that. And the same with any other foreign power.”

Privately British officials express exasperation at the EU’S intransigence on the issue. “This idea that Britain will become a rogue state after Brexit is both ridiculous and actually really unhelpful,” a senior UK official told The Daily Telegraph. “Britain is not some ‘Banana Republic’, as the EU well knows.”

Other European Parliament objections include a UK proposal to remove settled status from anyone who leaves the UK for more than two years.