LISBON — It helps to have an Italian grandma, but there are other escape routes for Brits hoping to stay European as their country cuts loose from the EU.
Since Thursday’s Brexit vote, U.K. citizens desperate to cling on to their rights to live, work and travel freely around the European Union are searching for new nationalities.
Those racing to secure second-passport post-Brexit insurance plans include a Belfast-born tech exec hoping Irish citizenship will safeguard his retirement plans in Spain; a London filmmaker mulling a marriage-for-passport deal from Italy; and scores of expat Brits from Estonia to Andalusia checking if their residency status and language skills qualify them for naturalization.
“The key point is the uncertainty of our situation,” laments Richard Tuffs, a Brussels-based Brit filing for Belgian nationality. “We’re just not sure what’s going to happen in the next two or three years, so people are looking for some sort of passport that gives them a European identity.”
“Can everyone with a marriage proposal please form an orderly queue” — Sarah Schiffling, Lincoln
For Britons not already resident in another EU country, genealogy can be the easiest way forward.
Proving there’s Italian, Polish or Lithuanian blood flowing through their veins can give Brits a get-out-of-the-U.K.-free card, if they can track down their nonna‘s birth certificate.
Brits with Jewish ancestry can consider recent laws passed in Spain and Portugal offering dual citizenship to anyone who can prove descent from Jews forced to flee the Iberian peninsula during the dark days of the Inquisition.
If the genes don’t offer a getaway, matrimony might.
Most EU countries will put Brits on a fast track to citizenship if they tie the knot with a national. That has prompted a flurry of online proposals from romantic continentals keen to comfort disconsolate Remainers.
“I have an EU passport; willing to do a romantic passport exchange (what we used to call marriage). Offers assessed individually,” London-based Italian actor Giovanni Bienne posted on Twitter.
“I know you’re after my EU passport, but can everyone with a marriage proposal please form an orderly queue — this is Britain after all!” tweeted Sarah Schiffling, a German lecturing at Lincoln University.
Academic approach
Despite such touching displays of solidarity, cross-border weddings won’t bring an automatic restoration of EU status.
Many countries require that happy couples take up residence before they’ll send passports to foreign spouses — four years in Sweden, three in Germany, just one in Slovenia.
Portugal and the Netherlands have no residency requirement, but the couples do have to have lived together for at least three years.
Education offers another solution.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Tuesday suggested EU nations should grant passports to British students enrolled in their universities.
“If a British student decides to spend two, three, four years in a university in Europe, we study now if it’s possible to give him a European passport — Italian, French or German,” he told reporters in Brussels.
Cypriot citizenship can be obtained within three months in exchange for an investment of €2.5 million.
France already offers streamlined naturalization to foreigners who complete post-grad higher education at a French university. A French master’s degree can reduce residency requirements for citizenship to two years from the usual five.
Brits signing up at the Sorbonne now, could have their carte d’identité way before Brexit actually happens.
Of course, the British have been known to struggle getting their tongues around the language of Molière. For those linguistically challenged but with deep pockets, Malta and Cyprus could be the answer.
Cypriot citizenship can be obtained within three months in exchange for an investment of €2.5 million. Maltese passports are a snip at €650,000, although wannabe citizens are also required to acquire property on the island and be resident for a least a year.
Outnumbered
Given those prices, it’s not surprising that Ireland has emerged as the destination of choice for those joining the Brexodus.
Foreign Minister Charlie Flanagan warned Monday that a rush of British requests risked overwhelming the republic’s passport service.
An estimated 6 million Brits are eligible for Irish citizenship, either though ancestry or birth in Northern Ireland. They outnumber the republic’s current population of 4.5 million.
Post offices in Northern Ireland have been running out of application forms for Irish passports.
“We have never handed out more forms, in such a space of time, ever before. We handed out approximately 400 forms (on Friday) which is unheard of,” Gavin Emerson, whose supermarket hosts the post office in Armagh, told The News Letter, a Belfast newspaper.
“I’m at risk of becoming a kind of Belgian nationality consultant” — Peter Guilford, Brussels
While assuring anxious Brits that Ireland has no plans to tighten its nationality rules, Flanagan appealed for them to hold off for a bit.
“An unnecessary surge in applications for Irish passports will place significant pressure on the system,” he pleaded, recalling that European free movement rights were not about to evaporate overnight. In Brussels, town halls are reporting a surge in demands for Belgian citizenship, despite European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker‘s assurances that the jobs of British EU officials are not at risk.
The city’s Uccle district received over 10 times more requests on Monday and Tuesday than in the whole of last year, VRT television reported. Ixelles reported 30 applications up to Tuesday morning, while the suburbs of Waterloo and Tervuren recorded a total of 34 requests.
Peter Guilford, executive chairman and partner at gplus europe, a Brussels-based consultancy, was ahead of the rush, putting in his Belgian nationality application three months ago.
“I’ve been here 30 years and Belgium has been good to me. I feel at home here, my kids are bilingual and have grown up here, so it feels natural, but I can’t hide the fact that it’s been triggered at this point of time by Brexit, by this uncertainty,” explained Guilford, a former Commission spokesman. “Now that I’ve done it, I get at least four calls a day from friends or colleagues, saying ‘how do you do it?’ I’m at risk of becoming a kind of Belgian nationality consultant.”
Belgium, which is home to around 27,000 Brits, makes it relatively easy for foreign residents to get nationality. They have to live there for five years, speak one of the country’s three official languages and show they are integrated.
Aliens
Elsewhere the bar can be higher. Residency demands are as high as 10 years, linguistic requirements can be stringent and — most discouragingly — many countries don’t allow dual citizenship. That means Brits seeking naturalization will, in theory at least, have to give up their U.K. passports.
That’s the case in Spain, home to Europe’s largest British immigrant community. Up to a million Brits are believed to be living there, including many retirees concentrated along the Mediterranean costas or in the Canary Islands.
To become Spanish they need to be legally resident for 10 years and prove they are good, well-integrated citizens, including by speaking Spanish. Then they must swear allegiance to King Felipe and renounce their British citizenship.
“There has been a lot of concern following the referendum result. These concerns are to secure their right of residence, their right to health care and their right to vote at the local elections,” says Roger Done, a Brit elected deputy mayor of the southern town of Arboleas, where his compatriots make up a majority of the 5,000 inhabitants.
“I will probably end up applying for Spanish nationality” — Simon Harris, Barcelona
Although the referendum result has created “a feeling of alienation from U.K. society,” Done told POLITICO, few are seeking to become Spanish.
“Most U.K. residents would not have the language skills to be able to qualify. They just want to continue with their current retirement, without worries,” Done added.
While expat pensioners fret more about the plunging pound impacting on their U.K. pensions, younger Brits are concerned about their right to work post-Brexit.
“I will probably end up applying for Spanish nationality,” says Simon Harris a tour guide and real estate adviser.
Harris isn’t fazed by the prospect of renouncing his U.K. citizenship, but after 28 years living in Barcelona, he has other concerns that illustrate how Europe’s current fault lines stretch way beyond Brexit.
“I’m a strong advocate of Catalan independence, so there are a couple of things that bother me: one is pledging allegiance to the Spanish flag and the king, the other is — after searching though my background — will the Spanish want me anyway?”