International News

LONDON, (MILLAT+APP/AFP) – The Frenchman behind one
of several grassroots campaigns for the post-Brexit rights of the three million citizens of other EU countries living in Britain remembers the referendum as a “nightmare”.
“Like many, I was convinced that we would win,” 46-year-old Nicolas
Hatton, who settled in Britain 21 years ago and is married to a British woman.
Hatton’s reaction to the result of a vote in which he, like other
Europeans living in Britain, was not allowed take part was “as if a relative had died”.
The former marketing manager decided to take action.
He founded “The3Million”, a pressure group for non-British EU
nationals that now counts 7,000 members on its Facebook group and is planning a protest next month as Britain prepares to leave the EU.
At the group’s first meeting in Bristol, the city in western England
where Hatton lives, he said 200 people came “with plenty of questions on how we were going to live in a country that no longer wants us”.
“We are not bargaining chips, we are people,” reads a slogan on the
group’s website — a reference to a comment by a government minister who said EU expats were “one of our main cards” in Brexit negotiations.
Prime Minister Theresa May has said that she would like to give
guarantees on the status of EU citizens in Britain but that that will depend on a reciprocal deal for the estimated 1.2 million Britons living elsewhere in the European Union.