The people have spoken. What they said wasn’t clear, but we got the gist and so, by the end of March 2019, the UK will have left the EU. There remain rather a lot of details to be straightened out, but, at the end of it, many of our automatic rights and privileges may have disappeared. Even those that make it into UK law via the promised “great repeal bill” could be removed subsequently. So here is a suggested EU bucket list. Make the most of these, while you can.
Harangue your MEP
In two years’ time, you won’t have one, no matter where the negotiations lead. What do you mean you don’t know who your MEP is? You have several, from a mixture of different domestic parties, representing the proportion of votes cast in your electoral region of the UK. What do you mean you don’t know which electoral region you live in? You’re hopeless. Just find your MEPs on europarl.org.uk and email all of them about pesticides or air pollution or something. Don’t forget to wish them good luck in their new careers.
Buy some land and get an EU grant
If the European project stands for anything, apart from peace and stuff, it’s about paying people to be farmers. To get your taste, buy at least five hectares of agricultural land and become what the EU deems an “active farmer”. That’s the easy part. Now fill out the forms. Without delving into the details here, you’ll need to prove that you can spend your days defiling the natural world, but that you choose not to. Real swots get bonus cash if they can show that they are actively protecting nature or some aspect of rural life. Hipsters wanting something less mainstream can get a subsidised cover for their slurry store. Altogether, it can be very lucrative. Between 2011 and 2016, Paul Dacre, who by day vilifies the EU as editor of the Daily Mail, received more than £460,000 in EU grants for his country estates. Overall, the EU pays British farmers about £3bn a year.
Use the blue lane at an airport
It is a rare moment of pleasure after your plane lands: you get to walk through not the red nor the green customs channel, but the blue. There is no hassle, no tax and no (further) delays. Having arrived from the EU, you don’t even have to declare whether you have anything to declare. In two years, that moment will be gone, replaced perhaps with some indulgent fudge for Brits – or perhaps not replaced at all. Enjoy it as a transient privilege. Then enjoy learning about how much the contents of your suitcase can be worth before you have to start paying duty on them. (Right now it’s £390, when you return from outside the EU.)
Go and live on a Greek island
It doesn’t have to be a Greek island, of course. It could be a Spanish villa, a Swedish eco-lodge or a French chateau, if you have the means. As an EU citizen, you have the right to live and work wherever you wish, and for as long as you wish, in our small but splendid continent. Until March 2019. Whether you’ll get much work done on a sunny Greek island remains to be seen.
Live in sin with your European lover
There are about 3.3 million non-British EU citizens living in this country, and there is no absolute guarantee their right to remain here will extend beyond March 2019. As a result, if one of them is your boyfriend or girlfriend, you may want to enjoy the unholiness of your union while it lasts because soon you might have to promote them to husband or wife before who-knows-what visa restrictions are invented. You probably have two years to make the decision, but it is a big one, so best to start thinking about it now. To add spice to the relationship, try making them pass a language and citizenship test of your own devising.
Retire comfortably in the sun
Of the 1.3 million Britons who live elsewhere in the EU, the largest group are pensioners, many of them retired to warm spots in Spain or France. As things stand, they continue to receive a UK pension that rises with inflation, the same as for pensioners at home. After Brexit, however, the government will be able to freeze their pension indefinitely, if it wishes, making them gradually poorer and poorer in real terms. Of course, many have already got poorer quite quickly, thanks to the weakened pound. Still, two years of feeling safe in the sun remain. Unless you’re not old enough to get a pension yet, in which case think of these as two more happy years of not lending money to your parents.
Get a bargain emergency appendectomy on holiday
Every EU citizen is entitled to a free European Health Insurance Card (EHIC). They aren’t fun, but they are useful because they mean that the EU’s other public healthcare systems must provide visitors with treatment “on the same basis as it would to a resident of that country”. Usually, that means for free or at a small cost, but it only works if the treatment is “medically necessary”, so prank appendectomies on stag weekends to Prague don’t count. If you have not been lucky enough to fall ill while visiting Europe with an EHIC in the past, there are still plenty of simple ways to hospitalise yourself during a future visit to, say, Ibiza, Amsterdam or Ayia Napa.
Eat camembert with confidence
All EU citizens are free to imitate whatever strange rituals they inflict on milk in the French commune of Camembert, but under EU law they have to call it something else. The same goes for the ham of Parma, the olives of Kalamata and the marzipan of Lübeck – and indeed the pork pies of Melton Mowbray and the cheese of Stilton, along with dozens of other regional specialities produced in the EU’s member states. For this reason, Britons have come to know that when they spend their money on “parmesan” they can expect a certain depth and richness, and when they spend slightly less money on “Italian-style hard cheese” they can expect something else. In future, however, there will be little to stop phoney parmesan and camembert from flooding the UK market. A leaked EU report has also worried about English “champagne” and “Parma ham” being sold on the continent. The English could even start distilling “scotch”. Which ought to settle Scottish independence, if nothing else.
Buy British food (while you can afford it)
Quite what Britain’s farms would do without workers from Portugal and eastern Europe is one of Brexit’s great unanswered questions. At present, about 85,000 EU citizens travel to the UK to work on the annual harvest. They also make up 120,000 of the 400,000 workers in the food-processing industry. Some Brexiters hope that British people, assuming there are enough of them, will suddenly start to do the low-skilled jobs that, for some reason, they weren’t keen on doing previously. And indeed a labour shortage should certainly raise wages, but how far? If crops become too expensive to harvest and sell, some farmers, fresh from losing their EU subsidies, may go out of business. Those that remain will have to charge vast sums for their produce, while the weak pound makes imported food much more expensive.
Get a free cappuccino from a nice Italian person at Pret a Manger
Like its farms, Britain’s restaurants, cafes and hotels could be transformed by Brexit, which again might mean being transformed into bankrupt restaurants, cafes and hotels if they can’t replace lost European staff. “It is going to be very, very tough indeed,” according to Ufi Ibrahim, chair of the British Hospitality Association. In the case of Pret a Manger, the problem could be extreme. Sixty-five percent of the company’s staff come from the rest of the EU, and only one in 50 job applicants is British, according to the company’s head of human resources, Andrea Wareham. Nor will higher wages change things. “It really is a case of: do people want to work in our industry?” Wareham says. So whether you’ll have to flirt with British staff in future, or pay for a coffee elsewhere, the old ways could soon be coming to an end.
Study at the Sorbonne
Named after the cosmopolitan Dutch scholar (then rather awkwardly explained as the European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students), the Erasmus programme was founded in 1987 and has since helped more than 3 million students to live and study for up to a year in another EU country. They get a small monthly grant and the guarantee that their home university will recognise their foreign labours, and many have a wonderful time. There is no guarantee that the programme will continue to include British students after Brexit, however. So if you are a student, apply for it. If you are not a student, there is still time to enrol for September, and then apply.
Chat to friends at home from the centre of St Mark’s Square
After many years of haggling, new EU regulations come into effect next month that will finally end the practice of adding so-called roaming charges to people’s phone bills when they make calls in another EU country. Yet the very committee that agreed the new rules has now confirmed, in a leaked document, that the benefit will be taken away from British travellers when Britain leaves the EU. In other words, phone companies will be free to rip you off again. So when you’re on holiday this summer, have a nice long chat on your mobile with the folks at home. Tell them in detail what you can see and what a great time you’re having. From the summer of 2019, such smug pleasures may be more than you can afford.
Save the world
Because as a British taxpayer, you are helping to fund the Iter experiment in the south of France, which might actually manage it. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is a gigantic attempt, costing $20bn, give or take, to make a nuclear-fusion power station. If successful, it could lead the way eventually to clean, plentiful and cheap electricity for all of humanity. Iter is currently being built, and is scheduled for completion in 2019, just as Britain leaves the EU. We helped pay for it, but unless some new role is agreed for us, we may have to watch its triumphs in the 2020s from the sidelines.
Take a relaxed stroll into Ireland
This could get really grim. Life has been more peaceful in Northern Ireland since the 90s, partly because of its effectively nonexistent border with the south, where no passport is needed. While Ireland is a fellow EU member, this is easy to administer. After Brexit, however, such a border would allow people on both sides to flout the different customs and immigration rules. People from anywhere in the EU could travel unhindered to Ireland, then unhindered to the UK. Building checkpoints and passport controls will return the feeling of division between north and south, and create fresh targets for republican militants, who often attacked such checkpoints in the past. Both Theresa May and Ireland’s taoiseach, Enda Kenny, have talked about wanting a “frictionless” border, but it is still far from clear how that can be managed. So enjoy the current one, while it continues to be safe.
Expunge your sordid past from the internet
Ever received unfair attention, or done anything regrettable, online? Let me rephrase that. Which of your regrettable appearances on the internet do you regret the most? Because now might be the time to do something about it. As an EU citizen, you have the right to compel Google (or one of the other search engines) to remove any links to your embarrassment from popping up when someone searches for your name, provided the page is “inadequate, irrelevant, no longer relevant, or excessive” and that removing it is not against the public interest. When you are a non-EU citizen, in two years’ time, Google (etc) might say no, and the British government might let them. Choose now to let it all hang out, or quickly reel some of it back in.
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion