EU demands free registration for 3m Europeans in Britain

THE European Parliament is demanding the UK register three million EU citizens in Britain after Brexit, without charge, in an attempt to backtrack on the terms of the December Brexit deal, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

Guy Verhofstadt, the head of the European Parliament’s Brexit steering group, demanded the “free” registrations for EU citizens in the UK in a letter earlier this month to Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary.

The European Parliament is also demanding that EU citizens in Britain be granted “settled status” automatically if they do not receive a response from the Home Office to their applications after a “short cut-off date”, according to the letter.

The European Parliament’s demands come despite the fact that the European Commission has said it is happy with the UK’S proposal to charge a £65 fee to register, which is cheaper than the cost of obtaining a passport.

Mr Verhofstadt’s demands were made in the July 3 letter which has been seen by The Telegraph, listing requests on how the British government should handle the registration of some 3million EU citizens living in the UK.

“We still believe that as a matter of principle the process should be cost free,” he writes.

In a statement, the Home Office ignored Mr Verhofstadt’s request and promised it would provide real-time estimates of how long EU citizens’ applications were taking and notify applicants if their cases were going to take extra time. A spokesman said the average case is expected to take two weeks.