Brussels hits back at May in new storm over rights of EU citizens

THERESA May has sparked a new row with Brussels after she warned the UK would seek to limit the rights of EU citizens who come to Britain during the post-Brexit transition.

Speaking during the second day of her official visit to China, the Prime Minister said those arriving after the Brexit date of March 2019 could not expect to enjoy the same rights as those who came before.

Her intervention provoked an angry response from senior EU figures who insisted EU law, including the free movement of people, must apply throughout the proposed 21-month transitional period.

Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s co-ordinator on Brexit, said the UK had to remain subject to the entire acquis, the accumulated body of EU legislation and case law, if the transition was to work.

“Citizens’ rights during the transition are not negotiable,” he said. “We will not accept that there are two sets of rights for EU citizens.”

His comments were echoed by the parliament’s vice-president, the senior Irish MEP Mairead McGuinness, who accused the Prime Minister of trying to appease critics on her own backbenches.

“I think what Theresa May is doing is trying to keep the Conservative Party Brexiteers online,” she told BBC Radio 4’s The World At One.

“There should be absolutely no misunderstanding here. The idea of the transition is to get us both to a place where we have a new relationship but in the interim, while the UK would leave the institutions, it remains within all of the acquis.”

Earlier, speaking to reporters, Mrs May made clear she was determined to fight the EU proposal when negotiations on the transitional arrangements begin.

“When we agreed the citizens’ rights deal in December, we did so on the basis that people who had come to the UK when we were a member of the EU had ... made a life choice and set up certain expectations and it was right that we have made an agreement that ensured they could continue their life in the way they had wanted to,” she said.

“Now, for those who come after March 2019, that will be different because they will be coming to a UK that they know will be outside the EU.

“This is a matter for negotiation for the immediate period but I’m clear there’s a difference between those people who came prior to us leaving and those who will come when they know the UK is no longer a member of the EU.”