Logo Polskiego Radia

Citizens should not be held hostage to Brexit process: Polish deputy FM

PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk 28.04.2017 11:57
Citizens should not be held hostage to the Brexit process, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Konrad Szymański said on Friday, ahead of an EU summit on Britain’s divorce from the bloc.
Konrad Szymański. Photo: PAP/Jacek TurczykKonrad Szymański. Photo: PAP/Jacek Turczyk

Twenty- seven European Union nations, excluding Britain, will on Saturday hold a special summit in Brussels at which they are to adopt guidelines for negotiating Brexit conditions with the United Kingdom.

Britain is expected to leave the European Union in March 2019, two years after British Prime Minister Theresa May triggered the exit procedure. Both sides have two years to negotiate the conditions for the divorce.

"At this stage, from the Polish point of view, the most important thing is that Polish interests are well embedded in the EU’s negotiating mandate, because it is the EU that will negotiate” the rules for the UK's departure, Szymański told Polish Radio.

"I think that today I can say that...we have included very precisely all our key expectations into the draft which will be the subject of debate by heads of governments.”

He pointed to Polish demands that the legal situation of Poles in Britain will not change after Brexit. Poles comprise the largest group of non-British EU nationals living in the UK.

"Our position is that all those who moved to Britain when the country was a member of the European Union should permanently enjoy those rights provided by European Union law," Szymański said.

"I think both the United Kingdom and the EU are of the opinion that citizens should not be victims of the UK's exit from the EU, that citizens should not be held hostage to this process, that citizens deserve legal guarantees and a certain sense of legal predictability."

(pk)

Source: PAP

Print
Copyright © Polskie Radio S.A About Us Contact Us