The People's Challenge

French Avocat Julien FOUCHET has set out in an article in La Connexion his thoughts on the case he has taken to the CJEU on behalf of Harry Shindler and 12 others.

According to La Connexion, “Despite Mr FOUCHET having lodged the case a year ago, today’s hearing still focused on preliminaries – having to prove to the judges that the case is worthy of a full hearing of all the arguments because it is founded on real harm done to his clients as a result of the referendum in which they could not take part.”

Getting past this permissions stage is crucial in being able to present the substantive arguments, see our previous blog post.

Avocat FOUCHET says that the judges in this permissions hearing may take until September or October of this year to return a decision on whether the case can proceed.

If that is the case then we have to recognise that by September/October political decisions will be done and dusted.

La Connexion reported Avocat FOUCHET as saying “The president of the court [lead judge] said they will consider three possibilities, that the case is admissible, it is not admissible, or that there will be another hearing that will consider the admissibility and the detailed arguments at the same time.”

There is no guaranteed win/win in any case. The arguments in this case are multi-faceted as we outlined in our blog piece based around the commentary of Aurélien ANTOINE, a Professor of Law at the Jean Monnet University, St Etienne.

First of all the case has to be accepted by the court and we have to wait another 2 or 3 months to find out whether that will happen. The main questions seem to be whether Harry Shindler and his 12 co-claimants are entitled to take the issue to the CJEU at this stage, at least in part because the EU Commission contends that there has not yet been a decision on whether any rights will be lost.

If the case is accepted the court then has to listen to and adjudicate on the substantive arguments.

What won’t happen is Harry Shindler or any of us UK expatriates being forced to return to the UK by EU27 countries, that is Project Fear at its very worst.

What may happen is that we lose fundamental citizenship rights, but that won’t just happen to UK expatriates, it will happen to millions of UK citizens, most of whom live in the UK.

There is a fight to be had, but it is not just about the rights of UK expatriates, it is about the rights of UK citizens.

There is a lot of material in the Millions in the Margins work we have commissioned. Alongside the “Three Knights Opinion” and the Gold Card booklet which we commissioned and published last year, it will be an essential part of understanding what is at risk for ordinary people – the rights and opportunities that are being sacrificed on an altar of political expediency and dogma.

This collective body of work also demonstrates conclusively why it must be the UK’s Parliament that has the final say on whether leaving or remaining in the EU is what is best for the UK and its people.

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We value your support. Just keeping track of the campaigns and challenges that have objectives that match our own takes time and effort, much of what we do costs money that we can only afford to spend with the financial support of people like you.

Many people have contributed not once but multiple times and we know that there are practical limits on what people can do. Whether you can make a contribution (click on the image above) or not please spread the word among your contacts and on the social media.

Our aim is to help people see what’s going on, understand what they are, or aren’t, being told, and decide what is the best outcome for the UK: an outcome in the national interest, protecting fundamental citizenship rights and ensuring Parliament and not the executive is sovereign.

There is still a long way to go and there are no guarantees about what the outcome will be. The only thing that is certain is that if we stop trying we will lose.

To help protect our fundamental rights, and support Parliament in safeguarding them, please support us so we can maintain our campaign and make your voice heard.

Please share this article as widely as you can, thank you very much for your support.

Published by Grahame Pigney on behalf of The People’s Challenge Ltd.

Earlier this week we received the draft of the legal advice “The Millions in the Margins” which we commissioned on your behalf from John Halford at Bindmans and Gerry Facenna and his colleagues at Monckton Chambers.

With the scope of the brief the advice is extensive, some 46 pages, and complex. Even though it is still a draft we are very pleased with it

The team have told us it is “very clear” our concerns about marginalisation of a great many UK nationals in the negotiations are “well founded” and that “many are simply left unprotected” adding that the advice we have commissioned:

“…will highlight absences in the Draft Withdrawal Agreement including:

• categories of people whose rights have not been protected by the withdrawal agreement, even where they may have made past life choices in the expectation that they one day would have a right of residence in another state;
• inconsistencies in the withdrawal agreement between the treatment of different types of relationship;
• gaps in the protection of some children and disabled people; and,
• certain special rights which currently guarantee family cohesion but are no longer being protected.

The advice will look at ways in which residence rights can be lost and the risks this presents as well as the restrictions which have been placed on continued rights, effectively locking people in to a single country.

We examine the extent to which the gaps in protection in the Withdrawal Agreement are inconsistent with a number of fundamental legal requirements including:

• the duty on the EU to respect fundamental rights and certain international law obligations when entering into agreements with a State which is to become a non-Member State;
• the duty to respect the principle of non-discrimination; and
• the duty to respect the prohibition on retroactivity as well as the principles of legal certainty and legitimate expectations.

 We conclude that there are real grounds for concern that the Withdrawal Agreement fails to respect a number of these rights, duties and principles.”

This work is essential and unique: only The People’s Challenge is giving the Withdrawal Agreement, which in its final form may shape the fate of millions, the independent scrutiny it requires.

Given that there are inevitably questions and clarifications, as well as making sure we address issues brought into plain sight by the British Chamber of Commerce, the Professional and Business Services Council and the Business Minister (Greg Clark) in the past few days, it will be a few days yet before we have the final version.

We are working with our legal team to clarify and hone the advice in the light of the fast developing circumstances. Even yesterday there was yet another, far from perfect (David Davis says “impossible”), proposition leaked out from No. 10.

Rest assured, though, we will be bringing this information to you, as soon as we can.

____________________________________________________

We value your support. Just keeping track of the campaigns and challenges that have objectives that match our own takes time and effort, much of what we do costs money that we can only afford to spend with the financial support of people like you.

Many people have contributed not once but multiple times and we know that there are practical limits on what people can do. Whether you can make a contribution (click on the image above) or not please spread the word among your contacts and on the social media.

Our aim is to help people see what’s going on, understand what they are, or aren’t, being told, and decide what is the best outcome for the UK: an outcome in the national interest, protecting fundamental citizenship rights and ensuring Parliament and not the executive is sovereign.

There is still a long way to go and there are no guarantees about what the outcome will be. The only thing that is certain is that if we stop trying we will lose.

To help protect our fundamental rights, and support Parliament in safeguarding them, please support us so we can maintain our campaign and make your voice heard.

Please share this article as widely as you can, thank you very much for your support.

Published by Grahame Pigney on behalf of The People’s Challenge Ltd.

On Thursday last, the Business Secretary Greg Clark came perilously close to admitting that Brexit and Theresa May’s “red lines” will hurt “ordinary people”, UK citizens who live in the UK.

He was speaking at an International Business Festival in Liverpool and explaining how important the services sector was, not only in its own right but as part of the manufacturing sector.

When people think about the services sector they usually think about the City of London – insurance, investments and banking.

But that is only part of the story. The service sector embraces accountants, lawyers, publicists and marketing professionals, safety and service engineers, IT professionals, people who advise on supply-chain management and Just-In-Time manufacturing processes…

Many of these people need to have their professional qualifications recognised in the countries they work in, to satisfy national regulations or to satisfy the quality assurance procedures of the companies they work for.

All of them need to have freedom of movement, freedom of operation to be able to travel to where they need to work.

According to Greg Clark, the EU is by far and away the largest consumer of UK services, £90 billion in 2016, giving us a surplus of £14 billion. The next 8 largest services export markets do not add up to the size of the EU market.

More than a third of the value of the UK’s manufacturing exports is actually services, the in-service support and maintenance following on from the initial sale.

Why highlight all this in the context of our Millions in the Margins campaign?

The people we are talking about are resident in the UK, and even if they are currently classified as cross-border workers (and many will not be), only have limited protection under the current exit terms.

Of course if the people are EU27 citizens with the right to reside in the UK they will not only have their qualifications recognised under the terms of the exit agreement their freedom of movement in the EU27 countries is also guaranteed.

Another example of how the tick-box approach to negotiations is prejudicing the EU citizenship rights of UK citizens.

With Theresa May’s “red lines”, there is little prospect of them being protected under any future trade deal between the UK and the EU.

Some of these people are employees of large companies, some are owner/operators of Small/Medium sized Enterprises, and others are self-employed or sole traders.

All of them are at best in the margins of the current draft exit agreement, some of them are actually off the page and have not even been considered by the UK or the EU in their negotiations.

This is yet another example of the over-simplification of the situations of real people, who are likely to suffer real harm if the UK and the EU persist in not recognising them and the problems they will face.

If we want what is Best for the UK we need to know how people will be affected by the UK leaving the EU.

This is not speculation, nor is it “Project Fear”, in fact what we are describing is the outcome under what is probably the most favourable of available Brexit outcomes.

With Theresa May’s “Red Lines” and her tendency to follow the dictates of those who favour a Hard Brexit the reality could well be a lot worse.

Mind you at least Greg Clark is still arguing on behalf of business as opposed to Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt who seem to be giving them the proverbial finger.

Whether you want a “Soft Brexit” or “No Brexit” we need this information about how ordinary people are being ignored, their rights diluted and devalued and how our children’s futures are being thrown under a big red bus covered in lies.

____________________________________________________

We value your support. Just keeping track of the campaigns and challenges that have objectives that match our own takes time and effort, much of what we do costs money that we can only afford to spend with the financial support of people like you.

Many people have contributed not once but multiple times and we know that there are practical limits on what people can do. Whether you can make a contribution (click on the image above) or not please spread the word among your contacts and on the social media.

Our aim is to help people see what’s going on, understand what they are, or aren’t, being told, and decide what is the best outcome for the UK: an outcome in the national interest, protecting fundamental citizenship rights and ensuring Parliament and not the executive is sovereign.

There is still a long way to go and there are no guarantees about what the outcome will be. The only thing that is certain is that if we stop trying we will lose.

To help protect our fundamental rights, and support Parliament in safeguarding them, please support us so we can maintain our campaign and make your voice heard.

Please share this article as widely as you can, thank you very much for your support.

Published by Grahame Pigney on behalf of The People’s Challenge Ltd.

The current version of the Brexit deal is the talk of the town, but sadly it’s much ado about nothing.

There’s very little in the current Brexit deal, much of what is there is controversial in one way and/or another and what remains to be talked about (whether people want to talk about it is another matter) is fraught with difficulty.

People are being thrown under the bus, not the trade bus but the Brexit bus.

And it’s not just UK citizens in the EU. It’s any UK citizen who’s made significant life choices based on being an EU citizen, it’s any UK citizen whose future life choices will be limited by Brexit, it’s anybody who’s got family and/or friends who fall into those groups… and more.

The issue about the numbers involved has come up again and now we have a crucial piece of feedback: the majority of the UK citizens registered in the EU are said to be working.

It’s common knowledge to people who live in France and Spain (which between them host the majority of UK expats) that there are large numbers of UK citizens living there who are older, retired, semi-retired, early retired, etc. So it seems to be getting ever more obvious that the official figures are off (for those who still doubted that they were).

However, there are significant geographical variations. In and around places like Paris (big city and capital city) and Toulouse (aerospace), there will almost certainly be a majority of younger, working people drawn by employment and undaunted by higher living costs.

In rural France (which is most of it, by the way), you will find that many UK citizens are over-50s drawn by the weather, the lifestyle, the cheaper cost of living… and (hopefully) undaunted by the distance to the nearest Starbucks.

I have drawn my examples from France because I know the country. The same may be, indeed probably is, true of Spain and perhaps other EU 27 countries.

The point is that you can’t assume a one-size-fits-all solution will do the job, something David Davis needs to wake up to when he assumes that the vast majority of UK citizens living in EU27 countries, i.e. those who have exercised their EU citizenship rights, are retired, only interested in pensions being paid and not interested in freedom of movement.

The point is that we need to work with facts, otherwise we cannot realistically assess what the impact of Brexit will be, and how many people will feel it directly. Generalisations based on unproven figures are easier to come up with, but they aren’t helpful, and worse, they may be extremely misleading.

Citizenship rights apart, many people are already feeling the foreshocks of Brexit as prices rise, crops stay unpicked in the fields and EU 27 nationals prepare to return home or decide not to come to the UK in the first place. The beleaguered NHS, touted (sorry, but that’s the word) as the primary beneficiary of Brexit, is already among its first victims, and the UK is still a member of the EU.

It’s late in the day to still be asking for real information. There is an argument to be made that significant work should have been done on this before the referendum. But it wasn’t. As Dr Phil says, “It is what it is and the only time is now”.

But would you get on a train or a plane, or even a bus, to go somewhere unknown, carrying a ticket that has no price on it? It’s time to press for real information, substantiated facts, unbiased reasoning. Only on this basis can an informed decision be made about what is best for the UK and all its citizens.

The People’s Challenge will shortly, hopefully next week, have the results of the first tranche of work on the Millions in the Margins commissioned from our legal team.

Undoubtedly it will take a little while for us to digest what they say and how best to put it out. They are legal eagles, that’s what we pay for, and so, perhaps somewhat inevitably what they provide us with will to some extent be couched in terms of legal precedents and references. We will get it to you as soon as we can.

____________________________________________________

We value your support. Just keeping track of the campaigns and challenges that have objectives that match our own takes time and effort, much of what we do costs money that we can only afford to spend with the financial support of people like you.

Many people have contributed not once but multiple times and we know that there are practical limits on what people can do. Whether you can make a contribution (click on the image above) or not please spread the word among your contacts and on the social media.

Our aim is to help people see what’s going on, understand what they are, or aren’t, being told, and decide what is the best outcome for the UK: an outcome in the national interest, protecting fundamental citizenship rights and ensuring Parliament and not the executive is sovereign.

There is still a long way to go and there are no guarantees about what the outcome will be. The only thing that is certain is that if we stop trying we will lose.

To help protect our fundamental rights, and support Parliament in safeguarding them, please support us so we can maintain our campaign and make your voice heard.

Please share this article as widely as you can, thank you very much for your support.

Published by Grahame Pigney on behalf of The People’s Challenge Ltd.

This is based around a blog piece by Aurélien ANTOINE a Professor of Law specialising in UK public law on the submission Advocat Fouchet has made on behalf of Harry Shindler and 12 others to the Tribunal of First Instance of the Court of Justice of the EU. The submission is asking for the EU Council’s decision to enter into negotiations with the UK on the terms of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU to be annulled.

A.   The Submission.

The submission has two main threads:

1.      Thread One.

1. Infringement of the Euratom Treaty, contending that it requires a separate withdrawal and negotiating procedure.
2. The EU’s decision confers an exceptional competence on the EU to negotiate the UK’s withdrawal and excludes the possibility of a mixed agreement with ratification by the Member States

2.      Thread Two.

1. Infringement of the rights of ex-patriate EU citizens to be heard and vote in an election with a European scope and thus establishing a second-class group of citizens by denying their right to vote because they have exercised their freedom of movement and thus discriminating on the basis of residence.
2. Infringement of the rights of citizens of British overseas territories and countries.

• Infringing the principles of legal certainty and legitimate expectations by opening negotiations, the outcome of which is uncertain and which , the applicants say, will have a significant impact on the rights they derive from EU citizenship.

The submission asks that the court annuls the decision of the EU Council authorising the opening of negotiations with the UK for an agreement setting out the arrangements for the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.

The full submission lodged with the Tribunal of First Instance of the CJEU can be found here.

B.   Summary of conclusions from Aurélien ANTOINE – Professor of Law, Jean Monnet University, St Etienne

The conclusions in the article by Aurélien ANTOINE –  original French here, English Google translated version here, can be summarised as:

1.      First Thread

1. The UK signed up to Euratom as part of signing up to the EEA (1972) and then the EU (2008). Thus withdrawing from the 1972 treaty means withdrawing from Euratom. In any event this could only be contested based on the conclusion of the negotiations not the opening of negotiations.
2. If the exit treaty is held to be of mixed EU/Member State competence then this is a matter relevant to questioning the eventual treaty not the opening of negotiations and thus has little chance of success.

2.      Second Thread

1. This is exclusively a matter of UK (Member State) domestic law. The CJEU has only ruled on this in relation to European elections where the limitation of the right is disproportionate as in the case of somebody convicted of a serious crime and denied the right to vote in European elections. While the argument that the same ruling could be applied to a national referendum is interesting it is, nonetheless, very ambitious.
2. The issues here are the same as in previous points but are addressed from a different perspective

• The detail of the impact of any treaty negotiation is uncertain and the argument made seems less than solid.

Before the tribunal can consider these points it has to decide whether they can be heard by the tribunal.

Can the individuals bring the case to the tribunal. There are very limited circumstances where claimants, whether persons or corporations, can bring cases in the Tribunal.

They have to be directly and actually affected by the actions and not just the potential outcome of those actions. The actions have to be regulatory and not just preparatory. Extending the precedents quoted to this case could expand considerable the scope of the grounds for referral to the Tribunal.

The revocability of an Article 50 notification may have some relevance in determining this.

On all these issues, the TEU could legitimately stick to the preparatory nature of the decision and consider the request premature since the issues relate to the future agreement rather than the decision to open negotiations

Nevertheless, it may be that the revocability of an Article 50 notification, the separation of EU and Member State competences, and the exclusion of certain classes of persons from the referendum have to be determined in law before Brexit and the rights of EU citizens can be secured.

C.   Some background.

Aurélien ANTOINE is a Professor of Law at the University Jean Monnet, St Etienne, France and a member of the UK Constitutional Law Association. One of his specialisms is UK public and administrative law.

All referrals and court decisions rely on the use of preceding decisions/judgements and the argument(s) that they apply in the case being pursued. However, there is never just a binary outcome (win/lose, much less win/win) to a case just because it has been put forward.

Is it Judiciable, do the claimants have Standing, is the question within the court’s Jurisdiction, is the question in the Public Interest, and is the question Timely (neither premature nor too late), you can find our previous article on this here.

We have seen cases, not just Brexit related, rejected for one or more of these reasons. The difficulties of getting past these initial tests should never be underestimated.

Only once that initial stage is passed are the substantive issues argued in front of the court.

____________________________________________________

We value your support. Just keeping track of the campaigns and challenges that have objectives that match our own takes time and effort, much of what we do costs money that we can only afford to spend with the financial support of people like you.

Many people have contributed not once but multiple times and we know that there are practical limits on what people can do. Whether you can make a contribution (click on the image above) or not please spread the word among your contacts and on the social media.

Our aim is to help people see what’s going on, understand what they are, or aren’t, being told, and decide what is the best outcome for the UK: an outcome in the national interest, protecting fundamental citizenship rights and ensuring Parliament and not the executive is sovereign.

There is still a long way to go and there are no guarantees about what the outcome will be. The only thing that is certain is that if we stop trying we will lose.

To help protect our fundamental rights, and support Parliament in safeguarding them, please support us so we can maintain our campaign and make your voice heard.

Please share this article as widely as you can, thank you very much for your support.

Published by Grahame Pigney on behalf of The People’s Challenge Ltd.

So, has the EU given in to the blandishments of the UK, has the UK broken down the forensic, considered position of the EU?

No, this has nothing to do with the negotiations between the UK and the EU on the UK government’s ill-conceived intention of dragging the UK out of the EU at any cost and against what is clearly in the best interest of the UK.

This headline is about nothing more nor less than a commentary on the infighting between two factions (individuals?) in what is laughingly called the “ruling” party in the UK.

This petty, Tory turf war stands in stark contrast to principled positions that politicians took in the first referendum back in 1975. Labour is also guilty of prioritising its party political position over the interests of the UK and its people.

Unfortunately the debate about what is best for the UK and how to deal with Brexit has boiled down to a series of positions, stances and meaningless statements intended to bolster a party’s position in the polls.

It is now down to the public to mobilise behind groups focused on bringing common sense and more importantly democracy to play in the crazy world that this Brexit charade is being played out in.

Whether that is helping one of the bigger groups to organise and mobilise people locally and nationally to encourage sensible politicians to seek a sensible solution or by backing smaller more closely focused groups who are trying to show how ordinary people will be not only disadvantaged but also penalised by selfish, self-centred politicians.

While the bullies in the playground duke it out about who is the top dog the rest of us have to take the opportunity to take control and show why what is in the best interest of the UK is not some bi-partisan macho fight but a sensible, considered assessment of what is best for all of us.

____________________________________________________

We value your support. Just keeping track of the campaigns and challenges that have objectives that match our own takes time and effort, much of what we do costs money that we can only afford to spend with the financial support of people like you.

Many people have contributed not once but multiple times and we know that there are practical limits on what people can do. Whether you can make a contribution (click on the image above) or not please spread the word among your contacts and on the social media.

Our aim is to help people see what’s going on, understand what they are, or aren’t, being told, and decide what is the best outcome for the UK: an outcome in the national interest, protecting fundamental citizenship rights and ensuring Parliament and not the executive is sovereign.

There is still a long way to go and there are no guarantees about what the outcome will be. The only thing that is certain is that if we stop trying we will lose.

To help protect our fundamental rights, and support Parliament in safeguarding them, please support us so we can maintain our campaign and make your voice heard.

Please share this article as widely as you can, thank you very much for your support.

Published by Grahame Pigney on behalf of The People’s Challenge Ltd.