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Pro-Brexit protest in London (archive photo from 2019)
Photo: TOLGA AKMEN/ AFP
If it is up to the competent Advocate General at the European Court of Justice (ECJ), Britons will not be able to retain the advantages of EU citizenship after Brexit.
The loss of these rights is one of the consequences of the exit decision, argued Advocate General Anthony Collins in his Opinion presented in Luxembourg.
It was about the complaint of a British woman who lives in France and is no longer allowed to vote in local elections there.
The woman has lived in France since 1984, but still has British citizenship.
In the Brexit transition phase, she was removed from the electoral register of her place of residence.
On the other hand, she went to court in France.
She argues that she no longer has the right to vote anywhere: under British law, she is also no longer allowed to vote in Great Britain because she moved away more than 15 years ago.
Citizens of other member states are allowed to vote in local elections in EU countries if they have their main residence there.
Since Brexit, however, that no longer applies to Britons, said Collins.
The right to vote is not one of the rights granted to them for the transitional period.
The fact that women in Great Britain are no longer allowed to vote is a question between them and their home country, not a question for the EU.
The Opinion is a legal opinion that the judges of the ECJ do not have to follow when making their decision.
But they are often guided by it.
A date for the pronouncement of the verdict is not yet known.
hey/AFP
