Looking back on 10 years of Brexit

The vote to leave the European Union (EU) taken in the referendum on EU membership in the UK on 23 June 2016 was like a juggernaut crashing through the lives of 1.2 million UK citizens living in the EU27 and what turned out to be 6 million EU27 citizens living in the UK. It also affected thousands more living in and from Norway, Iceland, Lichtenstein (EEA) and Switzerland (EFTA) who benefitted from EU free movement of people despite not being in the EU.

Over the next few weeks and months, to mark the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum we will be looking at what was at stake during the WA negotiations for UK and EU citizens who had exercised their free movement rights across the EU, how BiE and its country groups and the3million responded, which EU citizenship rights we managed to keep and which rights we lost, and what that meant for the individuals involved. And we won’t be forgetting the bilateral wins we achieved on an extension on home fees at UK universities for UK students who grew up in the EU27, EEA and EFTA, as well as the grace period that allowed UK citizens living in the EU27 to return to live in the UK with non-UK/Irish family members on the more generous Surinder Singh immigration route until August 2023.

Read our introductory article posted at the bottom of this news post.