The People's Challenge

Everybody, not just the few, deserves to have their citizenship rights protected.

Ensuring the rule of law and the protection of people’s fundamental citizenship rights are key elements of our challenge.

They go back to the very first action we took when we initiated a challenge to the UK government’s intention to illegally use the Royal Prerogative to trigger the Article 50 notice.

The arguments we put forward in court about fundamental citizenship rights were decisive in winning that case; indeed some involved in the case have said the government would have won the case if we had not put those arguments forward.

We originally launched our current campaign in order to do two things: raise money to sustain the campaign work and relieve the financial burden on the 2-3 people who previously shouldered it, we also needed funds in order to update some of our previously-published material and re-examine the opportunities for further challenges in the light of the on-going exit negotiations.

The questions of people’s fundamental rights and the observance of the rule of law are now coming into sharp focus again.

The EU and the UK are treating EU citizenship rights as something that is only triggered by a single event: you move to a country and stay there, like transplanting a tree. We are not trees.

The reality of the situation is that EU citizenship rights are embodied in a variety of laws and regulations that enable an individual to live, study, work, retire in any of the EU member states. Exercising these citizenship rights can happen in a singular, discrete moment or they can be exercised as part of an ongoing event or events.

Entitlement to these citizenship rights is in no way predicated on residing in an EU state other than your country of nationality.

It is unlikely that all EU citizenship rights can be preserved for all UK citizens; there is only one way that can be done with certainty. On the other hand it is clear that both the UK and the EU have opted for an arbitrary and simplistic scenario as a basis for the agreement on citizenship rights.

We have discussed this with our legal team and feel that The People’s Challenge can make a significant contribution to casting light on these issues, as indicated in previous posts.

Therefore we’ve put together an expert team to advise on who should be protected by the draft citizens’ agreement but have been left out of it, and the deficiencies in the protections being proposed for those groups covered by the draft.

We will then publish two documents – one for those groups of people who have reasonable prospects of being able to protect some or all of their EU citizenship rights through some form of legal challenge, and another document for those who have been left behind with seemingly little or no practical legal recourse.

And so now we have raised the limit for our campaign in order to fund work which will be undertaken.

This work affects millions of people. As well as publishing this material we will use it to inform and lobby MPs, MEPs and the members of the UK devolved assemblies on the deficiencies in the current draft agreement on protecting EU citizenship rights.

The era of governments being unaccountable for their actions is long gone and we need your help to again remind our political representatives of this.

If you care about the fundamental rights that Brexit puts in jeopardy, and the need for Parliament to safeguard them effectively, please help us to maintain our campaign and continue to stand up for you.

We need your support, please share and donate.

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