CITIZENS RIGHTS -

The EU side have published a seventeen page joint paper after the 3rd round of negotiations on the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU after Brexit (HERE). I note it is the EU doing this not our side. The negotiations are complex, far more complex that anyone might imagine and the different aspects are colour coded for easy recognition of where things are agree and where not. The note uses Green for convergence, Red for divergence and Yellow for the items where further clarification is needed.

The first note, released after the 2nd round in July (HERE), was eleven pages long. I don't propose to look at the details but it's interesting to note the number of areas where we agree is quite large and growing, but also worryingly is the number of areas where we disagree. You can see this is the table below

ITEMS DISCUSSED	After 2nd Round	After 3rd Round
Agreed	22	39
To be clarified	8	8
No agreement	14	22
For the EU Council	2	2

Citizens rights were supposed to be the easiest thing to get settled. The government was urged to offer EU citizens certainty immediately after the referendum but here we are, five months after Article 50 was triggered and we are clearly a long way from reaching agreement on this perhaps the most fundamental issue of all.