British citizens will no longer be EU citizens from 31 January if the withdrawal agreement Boris Johnson sealed in October is ratified.
But Brexit day will not be the full stop on almost three decades in which British people, like their counterparts across the EU, had the freedom to travel, work and retire in any other member states visa-free.
Those rights are scheduled to end on 31 December, when the transition period expires, freedom of movement ends and Britain leaves the single market.
We asked readers what they would like to do in the last 11 months in which these benefits of EU membership apply.
John Pedersen, 63, Totnes
Plan: Take as many trees as I can to the Dordogne
I have 25 acres of land by the Dordogne. No house there, just the land. I built a tiny cabin on it. I’m there spring and autumn planting a forest garden. I’ve been propagating trees here [in the UK] and taking them to France to plant out. All sorts of things: pomegranates, peaches, nectarines, walnuts and lots of rootstocks I can graft apples and pears and so on on to. This will be the last year I’ll be able to so freely take my trees over the border.
After Brexit, I’ll almost certainly need a phytosanitary certificate for each species of tree. Completely unaffordable at my scale of operation. So I’ll take as many trees as I can, and from next year on I’ll have to change the way I work, to try to propagate my trees in France, which will be tricky, as I’m not there all the time.
I might have to dig a large pond and grow my tree seedlings on rafts, hydroponically, so they’ll be protected from slugs, mice, deer, boar and rabbits. For some of the people I’ve got to know in the business, Brexit will be a disaster, as some of them sell the great majority of their plants to the EU.
Emma (name changed)
Unemployed and disabled
Plan: Get an electric wheelchair in the EU
I will continue my discrimination claim against the government body that I worked for, using the fair laws from the EU that cover workers’ rights before they are rewritten and possibly withdrawn by the Tories to exclude holiday pay or disability support.
I’d love to visit some more EU countries, but as my NHS wheelchair provider has been privatised, I need to fund £6,000 for the electric wheelchair suggested by said provider before I can leave the house independently or at least with minimal support. Please note that research has shown there to be other options at much lower price points, but they have not been considered by the provider.
I think I will also invest some of my time investigating the possibility of remaining an EU dual national by descent as my mum’s family are Irish immigrants, but it’s OK because she voted Tory as she says, “We have too many immigrants in this country.”
I might also look for a new, less xenophobic family.
Fergal (name changed), 63, Dumfries
Consultant surgeon
I am living and still working with metastatic lung cancer. I cannot get affordable travel insurance. After we leave the UK I will be unable to visit Europe again, which is especially bad because I plan to retire next year.
James Tasker, 23, Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Accountancy student
Plan: Interrail across Europe
I am devastated that within a year’s time I’ll cease to be an EU citizen, but I intend to make the most of it. Once I graduate I plan to embark on a few weeks interrailing through most of northern and central Europe; I’m going to visit cities across Germany, Austria, Hungary and Switzerland and develop my German language skills. Other than that, I’ll try to visit as many of my EU friends whom are dotted across Europe whilst it is still practical to do so.
CJ Brown, 50s, London
IT finance and risk
Plan: Move to an EU state with accelerated route to citizenship for skilled workers
I am going to move to one of the smaller EU27 countries that has an accelerated route to citizenship for highly qualified or skilled workers. Several of the eastern EU countries have this – Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia, for example.
I have enough in the bank to afford to support myself in such a move, to set up a start-up or work for a firm over there.
Whichever country I settle in, I intend to have a sideline recruiting highly skilled finance & IT workers who are also looking for a quick route to EU citizenship. I expect this brain drain to really accelerate in 2020 during the transition period. The UK will become a goldmine for talent for smaller EU countries.
Evan Alston, 55, Edinburgh
Delivery driver
Plan: Get an Irish passport
Make sure I obtain Irish citizenship and then a passport ASAP.
I had an Irish grandmother who left the Republic because she didn’t fancy a life of drudgery on the family farm. She watched part of the 1916 Rising across the street from the GPO (General Post Office, centre of the battle) and got shot at.
Most importantly, I’m going to spend the year telling my European friends and colleagues that I love them and that Scotland needs them to stay.
I’ve always wanted the UK to stay together but that is over so I’ll be campaigning for Indyref2 and a Yes vote. Finally, I’ll be making a special effort to be kind to folks. This is so important at this time. P.s. I’d also like to take a train journey on to the continent in late May/early June. No more flying.
Bronwen Griffiths, Rye, 63
Writer and activist for Syria UK
Plan: Continue visiting Europe
My first trip to Europe was in 1963 – my brother and I went with our parents to Austria by train and it was the most exciting thing. I’ve never looked back and will continue to visit Europe as long as my health allows it.
I love this country but now it feels mean and I feel like I’m wandering in a wasteland.
My partner and I are going off in our camper van in January, we aren’t sure where we are going but we are getting out of here for a while, probably down to Spain and Portugal.
Later in the year I hope to visit my cousin in Italy – she is English but has been married to an Italian doctor and has lived in Italy for 35 years and she is very sad to see us leaving and I am heart-broken too.
John Dew, 70, Germany
Retired theatre director
Plan: become German
Become a German. Odd? Not really – I have come to know Germans quite well and know that they are very open and generous people who can not understand why the Brits have gone off the rails so radically. None here understands why people in the UK are so radically opposed to working with the “Continent”.
Lucy (name changed for confidentiality)
Stay at home mum, 43
Plan: Get IVF again in the EU at the same price.
Robert (name changed), 21
Student
Plan: Become German
I’ve been offered a job in Germany working in customer service for Microsoft. I had never intended to take up an office job (all my previous jobs have been in tourism and involved being active). However, my priority is now leaving Britain for good.
I have been making the most of freedom of movement since the age of 18: I have Interrailed and travelled extensively, studied at a French university, worked in France as a tour guide, worked as a holiday representative in Spain, worked in a hostel in Budapest.
I’m using my last year of freedom of movement, as a British citizen at least, to become a legal resident of Germany and then hopefully one day regain the rights I am about to loose due to Brexit.
Thanks to Brexit, I won’t be able to easily keep doing the seasonal work I love doing, because the likelihood of receiving a work permit as a non EU national is slim to none. I think it’s a great shame because I have lived, worked and studied in three other countries already at the age of 21, all without hassle due to freedom of movement. Boris’ intentions for Britain scare me and I feel no option but to leave the UK to secure a better future for myself.
Mike Harris, 58, Leitrim, Ireland
Builder
Plan: Get Irish citizenship (even though I have no Irish family connection)
I shall be applying for Irish citizenship so I can retain all my rights as a European that have been taken away without so much as a please by the nut Brexiteers.
Having lived here for nearly 20 years, it shouldn’t be a problem; but, as someone with no familial Irish connection, it’s going to cost over €4,000 for the four of us in my family.
However, it will be well worth it not to have to be part of the dysfunctional UK. Showing a blue British passport as you queue with all the other non-Europeans would be the last straw. I shall have a small passport burning ceremony if I’m successful.
Helen Higgs, 62, Bournemouth
Retired systems developer
Plan: move to France
We will sell our house and try to persuade the French to let us live there.
Meanwhile, alongside the Good Law Project, and with the support of Guy Verhofstadt [Brexit coordinator for Europe], we will try to get associate citizenship established, so that we can continue to receive many of the benefits of EU membership outside of England.
Peter Chapman, Llanddulas, Wales, 79
Semi-retired aeronautical engineer
Plan: considering a move to France
I am seriously considering moving to live in France together with my wife to join our daughter and eldest son (and seven of our 10 grandchildren) – both of whom moved to France some 20 years ago. However, we have a dilemma – our youngest son and his wife with their three young children live close by to us in North Wales and it would be a tremendously difficult decision to make.
I have lived and worked in mainland Europe all of my working life – in Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. I was devastated and dismayed by the results of the general election and feel Brexit is the wrong thing to do – a big mistake – no one has ever given me any convincing argument or advantage for leaving the EU – no one ever will.
Clive Lewis, 62, charter engineer
Plan: Travel in EU
I have stage 3 cancer. I want to travel as much I can in the EU. I can’t afford travel insurance without EHIC (European Health Insurance Card). [I’ll] consider moving to Spain where I have friends, if possible; we’ve already looked at some properties. Uncertainty is the problem. I am European. Recently back from Amsterdam and we loved it.
David Cusack, 61, Llandudno
Plan: tie the UK to Europe
Buy 100,000 kilometres of premium steel cable, 5m thick and tie Europe to our nation so as we never lose our close ties to Europe, as we are all Europeans.
David Darler
Sound engineer
Plan: Go Dutch
Acquire Dutch citizenship, at all costs. I have not lived in the UK since May 2003 and to have to return would be a personal tragedy. My life is here, I have no connection with the UK. I will never go to Britain of my own volition.
Apart from this, we hope to start a collective of musicians and artists to challenge the destructive myths of our society. We live in a society whose dominant narratives, of human centrality on the Earth, social and technological progress, endless growth,the primacy of the individual … these stories no longer have any basis in reality, and no longer equip us to deal with the political and ecological challenges of the new century.
Thus, the next challenge, the most pertinent and urgent, must be to reinvent our cultural narratives to reflect our new situation. In the Netherlands we still have some hope that we can avoid our government being taken over by corporate-sponsored ethnic nationalists.
To my fellow British-Europeans: I’m sorry for how things worked out for you. Don’t give up, but reevaluate, because a narrative which claims our current economic and political institutions can continue with minor progressive-oriented adjustments is no longer convincing, and will become less so as ecological and social disasters occur with ever greater frequency.
Good luck.
Sofiya Cox, student, Aberdeen
Plan: get funding for an Erasmus period of study elsewhere in the EU
I would like to pursue a postgraduate degree abroad, somewhere that is cheaper than in the UK. After three years of my undergraduate degree in Scotland, a place where an English-registered student still has to pay £9,000 a year, with classes bountiful with European students who pay less than I have for the same teaching and degree classification, I am looking for a bargain.
By being treated like a customer of higher education in the UK, I am looking for a place that will observe my academic ability more than what I (don’t) have in my pockets. As a student of Politics and IR [International Relations], the debates around the political landscape in the future are coloured. They are 50 shades of uncertainty. Higher Education in the UK could do without this. Unfortunately, although I want to be optimistic about the future of; I am erring on the side of caution and would appreciate the opportunity of establishing my next step abroad, especially if the Erasmus funding was to be removed.
Simon Kitt, 37, farmer, Cornwall
Plan: move to another EU country, probably Portugal
I’ve worked as an outdoor grower and harvest manager of an organic farm in Cornwall, I also team led Erasmus projects in Europe.
I’m obviously very sad about the nation I can no longer be a part of; I’m English in birth only.
I’ll be remaining an EU Citizen and urge anyone who can, to find the resources to leave England. There’s nothing left for the younger generation in this country. I’m not 100% sure which EU country I will move to, but it’ll most likely be Portugal. I will be buying 10 acres and hosting Erasmus projects.
You may not be able to change the direction your country is moving in, but you can change your future. You don’t have to give up your rights, no one should be subjected to criminal abuse. Leave just as this nation has left its closest partners … it’s your life!
Harry, 72, businessman
Plan: looking forward to Brexit
We have three foreign daughters in law: one German, one Russian and one Australian with five grandchildren who have dual nationality so the outcome of the referendum has been looked at passionately over the past few years.
We operate as a family within the need of a visa-required world and find it a little inconvenient but accept it for what it is: those countries’ rights to control their borders and refuse entry or pack off home anyone they see as a threat to their security or a threat to them from serious criminal activity, including one of the most liberal countries in the world, Australia!!!
[I’ll] enjoy watching my country regain its democracy and plan for its return to an independent self-governing country; any inconveniences for having to apply for things like visas etc. are just part of the paperwork that we need to do when already travelling outside the EU. I’m old enough to remember the lies we were told when given our first opportunity of stating if we wanted to stay in the straitjacket that has now transformed from a trading partnership to a one size fits all conglomerate of now 27 countries all running very expensive home parliaments that have no ability to govern as they have no overall rights any more.
The biggest disaster to date was the introduction of the one size fits all euro, who says so? The very man whose idea it was in the first place, I wouldn’t argue with him as Im not qualified to do. He’s the professor of economics and recognised for it not me. I have carried out more reading on this one subject over the past four years than on any one single subject and therefore feel I take a balanced view. This whole circus pantomime played out right in front of our eyes and showed failings on all sides but was so intense it opened people’s eyes and I wasn’t surprised at the result of OUR general election.
Macy, 32, Manchester
Student nurse
Plan: might move to Netherlands
I would like to move to the Netherlands permanently so I can be with my fiancé and work as a nurse after I graduate. I was hoping to work for the NHS for a while before moving but with the GE [General Election] result I will have to move sooner.
I can’t stand to see the NHS fall apart under another Tory government, the stress of the job is too much even as a student and seeing my nursing colleagues struggle day after day unsafe staffing levels is too much.
With leaving to Europe I need to get my skates on as my nursing degree may not be recognised and I will have to apply as a third country which involves a more complex, lengthy and expensive application process. Fingers crossed I can pass the Dutch language test and get on their nursing register before the Dec 2020 deadline.
