As you may have heard in the news recently a decision has been made in the British High Court that EU citizens with pre-settled status will not lose their status if they do not apply for ‘settled status’. The Home Office confirmed that it will not appeal the High Court ruling that found that mandatory re-application is unlawful.

British in Germany is delighted that the threat of EU citizens losing their rights has been removed from the 2.6 million EU citizens in the UK who currently have pre-settled status. For more on the story and the background to the case go to the 3 million webpage.

This is also good news for British citizens living in the EU countries that have taken a similar “constitutive” approach to Withdrawal Agreement rights.   (Constitutive meaning the requirement to re-apply for citizenship status post Brexit)  Otherwise, there would certainly have been a risk that those EU countries, where re-application is required, might consider themselves justified in taking a similar line to that of the UK. Germany took the declaratory route rather than the constitutive, (declaratory meaning no requirement to re-apply for status post Brexit), so risks here in Germany are much lower.

For more background on the story in Germany see: https://britishingermany.org/2020/07/20/posttransitionupdate/

According to the UK Government, the number of concluded applications to the EU settlement scheme by July 2022 was 6,473,830.  Of those, 51% (3,281,950) were granted settled status and 41% (2,627,770) were granted pre-settled status. There were 306,300 refusals, 133,000 withdrawn or void outcomes and 124,560 invalid outcomes in the same period, representing, combined, 9% of total outcomes.