[johnm]

Speaking as a Swiss citizen all I can say is that I have never experienced any difficulty whatsoever in my car, aircraft or boat in the EU, and I don't see why the UK will be treated any differently.

I think that will depend on how the UK treats the EU!

Having crossed the Swiss border recently in a UK reg car (EU still of course) they were interested only in selling a vignette

Swiss into France and Germany no-one cared. That's just the practicalities of porous land borders and not much has changed since 1960s except traffic volumes are higher.

[James33]

Speaking as a Swiss citizen all I can say is that I have never experienced any difficulty whatsoever in my car, aircraft or boat in the EU, and I don't see why the UK will be treated any differently.

Thats because Switzerland is in the EEA and their citizens have free movement and europe wide licence recognition.

The UK wants to take that away from its citizens.

[stevelup]

Utter tosh.

The UK doesn't 'want' to take anything away from it's citizens.

[johnm]

Utter tosh.

The UK doesn't 'want' to take anything away from it's citizens.

17million voters apparently want to leave the EU, 16 million don't and 12 million don't care because they couldn't be bothered to vote.

Nobody knows what "leaving the EU" means in practical terms because the UK will need some sort of relationship with the EU even if we're not a member and the form of that relationship is not yet defined and understood. Our relationship with a big chunk of the rest of the world is partly determined by our status as an EU member and so that's not clear either.

However, there is a significant risk that in the final outcome a substantial number of UK citizens may well lose rights they want to keep and will not gain any useful rights to replace them. That is not because of the vote it is because of how HMG has chosen to interpret that vote.

[James33]

Utter tosh.

The UK doesn't 'want' to take anything away from it's citizens.

So why does it knowingly pursue an approach to Brexit which will cause the loss of those rights ?

[stevelup]

You said the UK 'wants' to remove the right to free travel for it's citizens.

That isn't what is 'wanted' at all, and everyone will do everything possible to make sure that doesn't happen.

[chevvron]

Speaking as a Swiss citizen all I can say is that I have never experienced any difficulty whatsoever in my car, aircraft or boat in the EU, and I don't see why the UK will be treated any differently.

Obviously it's another 'scare' story' put out by the remoaners.

[James33]

The governmentwants to leave the single market and end free movement of people.

Yes, "want"... which means they also
"want" it to end for UK citizens, as it is an inevitable consequence. If they didn't, they would keep freedom of movement

At the very least they are happy to sacrifice UK citizens' free movement to achieve this.

[johnm]

Speaking as a Swiss citizen all I can say is that I have never experienced any difficulty whatsoever in my car, aircraft or boat in the EU, and I don't see why the UK will be treated any differently.

Obviously it's another 'scare' story' put out by the remoaners.

Well no it isn’t. If the U.K. is neither in the EU or the EEA which is how govt are planning at the moment then citizens won’t have any of those privileges, unless they are specifically negotiated.

[Sooty25]

Speaking as a Swiss citizen all I can say is that I have never experienced any difficulty whatsoever in my car, aircraft or boat in the EU, and I don't see why the UK will be treated any differently.

Obviously it's another 'scare' story' put out by the remoaners.

Well no it isn’t. If the U.K. is neither in the EU or the EEA which is how govt are planning at the moment then citizens won’t have any of those privileges, unless they are specifically negotiated.

one of our problems is we have ended up trying to negotiate with Barnier and Tusk who repeatedly state they intend to punish the UK for leaving. How do you negotiate with mentality like that? They are completely ignoring the fact that we helped rebuild mainland Europe, create the EEC and then the EU. They have no right to "Punish" the UK. We have a right and an entitlement to a slice of the EU we foolishly helped create, and at huge cost.

I really don't see how we can withdraw from Brexit and be "friends" again. The negotiations have just brought out into the open, the desire by some within the EU parliament to bleed us dry, its just now they've only got one last chance to do it, and they are looking for every angle to try and scare us, whether it be aviation, driving licences, trade.

It is completely insane that the UK and the EU are negotiating directly. This whole episode needs some impartiality. It needs to be supervised by an independent party in the same way an unrelated mediator or Judge would sit between a divorcing couple. Non EU countries must be sitting there watching with bowls of popcorn, thinking what a bunch of tw@ts.

[chevvron]

Like I've said all along: they just want our money!
(and our fishing grounds of course)

[johnm]

In the great grand scheme of things our money is peanuts and the fishing grounds are a far more complicated conversation involving global conservation and resource management issues.

The "punish the UK" bit is unsurprising as we still keep trying to have our cake and eat it. The treaties we signed up to are clear and if we repudiate them, all bets are off and we're just another third country looking for a deal. The EU didn't create this problem we did and both parties are struggling to cope with an Article 50 process thrown in as an afterthought with no real procedures to support it.

Tusk and Barnier will follow logic, that's what European politicians and bureaucrats are trained to do. They'll find ways to bend rules in negotiation but for that they need a reasonable basis to start from.

There are lots of suitable models around, EEA being an obvious one, but none of those models can work unless the UK govt accepts the role of the ECJ in specific contexts like Switzerland, Norway and others do.

As long as the ECJ is one of the idiot "red lines" our only recourse is a completely customised relationship and good luck with figuring that out and implementing it within a year

The transition phase is designed to allow time to develop new systems to implement a new relationship until those systems are in place it seems entirely sensible that we operate the old system and that doesn't stand still. Trying to work with a hybrid during the transition period is simply bonkers.

[stevelup]

In the great grand scheme of things our money is peanuts

Well, not really. Our contributions in 2016 were 13.45% of the total - it's a bit of a stretch to call that peanuts!

[johnm]

In the great grand scheme of things our money is peanuts

Well, not really. Our contributions in 2016 were 13.45% of the total - it's a bit of a stretch to call that peanuts!

That's gross, net is what matters and that's 5.9% (approx.)

The UK (and most other countries) can't calculate budget and report spend to that level of accuracy so it really isn't a big issue, still less a negotiating weapon.

[cockney steve]

^^^^^^^^^^ You're suggesting that 13.3 % just comes straight back again?

There in a nutshell, is what's wrong with the whole Euro-State concept
5.9% of our contributions goes, in part, to subsidise other members, but what portion is absorbed by the whole junket's armies of administrators sat on the lucrative, highly secure, handsomely -pensioned gravy-train.

Our descendants will surely thank us for extricating the country from this top-slicing leviathan which just passes most back anyway (having took it's administrative overheads, of course.) I don't see any added value, only a huge drain. a classic, self-serving quango.