"We've heard little about European citizenship in Brexit debates, neither before the referendum of June 2016, nor since. Yet the status, rights and responsibilities of European citizenship attach to all UK nationals, whether they wish it or not. Since the early 1990s, children in the UK and other member states of the European Union are born European citizens. These millions of young people grow up able to travel freely throughout some 30 countries, study in them, in some places without paying university fees, oftentimes receiving bursaries under the Erasmus programme to encourage them to move around the Union and acquire additional language skills. Those of us who are older became European citizens in the 1990s, in addition to our status as UK citizens or citizens of other member states. Our passports have the words 'European Union' on the front cover and, as it says inside, we are entitled to seek assistance at the embassies of other EU member states whilst travelling, should our own national embassy not be accessible. Not only can we move freely within the territory of Member States, we also have the right as European citizens to reside in them. Millions of people take advantage of this right. More than three million UK citizens reside in other EU Member States, while more than two million EU nationals reside in the UK. Reciprocal access to health care underpins such migration, as do receipts of pensions and other benefits in the country of residence. Many UK citizens use their right as European citizens to work in other EU Member States and, correspondingly, one readily encounters German, French, Spanish, Italian, Irish, Polish, Lthuanian and all the other EU nationalities working in Nottingham, a small city in the English Midlands, which is increasingly internationally minded. As European citizens, EU nationals are entitled to vote and to stand as candidates in local and European elections in the Member State in which they reside. However, millions of EU nationals were excluded from voting in the 'Brexit' referendum of June 2016 in the UK, as were millions of UK nationals who reside elsewhere in the European Union." Tony Simpson in his Editorial: 'Europe in view': Provided by publisher.
