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ARCHIVED - BREXIT: What does Liz Truss becoming UK PM mean for Brit expats in Spain?
Analysis: will Liz Truss be a peacemaker with the EU or force a hard Brexit? And how will UK nationals abroad be affected?
After a month of deliberations, the Tory Party in the UK has finally decided on a replacement for the disgraced Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Liz Truss, formerly Foreign Secretary, will be the new leader of the Conservative Party and the next British PM, beating rival Rishi Sunak with 57% of the vote.
But what does this mean for UK nationals living in Spain or who own holiday homes in the European country?
Truss has traditionally been seen as a Brexit hardliner, even though she initially voted to Remain back in the 2016 referendum. Indeed, she is widely regarded as someone who will sacrifice her personal leanings to appease more extreme elements in her party and advance her political career, much like her predecessor Boris Johnson.
As Foreign Secretary, she was part of Brexit negotiations between the UK and EU that were agonisingly slow and fraught with tensions.
For example, Truss has stated that she is willing to overhaul Article 16 which would jeopardise the Northern Ireland protocol, potentially fracturing a hard-won peace in Ireland and forfeiting the rights of UK citizens in the EU as protected by the bill.
If activated, Article 16 would essentially force a no-deal Brexit, leaving Brits resident in Spain with their current rights to live, work and travel in the EU restricted further than they already have been since Brexit.
In the past, though, Truss has shown herself amenable to create a close working partnership with Spain, which has the largest number of British expats of any EU state.
Last December, Truss met with the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, to build “closer economic, tech and security ties” with Spain, and to “support” the 400,000 Brits living in Spain.
“We’re significant trading partners, with the UK as Spain’s biggest European investor and the UK as the top destination for Spanish investment,” she said at the time. “By boosting our trading ties even further, both Spain and every region and nation of the UK will benefit.”
However, for the thousands of British expats living in Spain, Truss’s decidedly inward-looking stance appealing to voters back home will more likely mean her main priority will not be the welfare of Brits abroad.
Since Brexit, UK citizens living in Europe have had significant trouble with driving licences and residency issues, to name but two of the main problems, and there is a strong feeling among many of having been abandoned by the UK government, as have UK citizens in Gibraltar.
In the Brexit referendum, 96% of people on The Rock voted Remain, and since then the status of the British territory on Spain’s southern coast has been muddied by complicated multilateral negotiations between Gibraltar, London, Madrid and Brussels that have already disrupted life for people living in Gibraltar, who frequently have to travel back and forth across the EU border for work and health needs.
The free movement of ambulances across the Gibraltar-Spain border came into question earlier this year, with a last-minute deal the only assurance for Gibraltarians that they would continue to receive emergency transfer to hospital, but in general residents of the Rock must now do without healthcare in Spain.
In another instance, the scrapping of a deal to bury Gibraltar rubbish in Spain meant that garbage piled up precariously on the Port last March, threatening to topple into the sea.
It’s for this reason that the Bremain in Spain group will take part in the National Rejoin March in London on Saturday September 10 to “deliver a warning to the new PM about the impact of Brexit on the spiralling cost of living crisis in the UK”, to express a “clear and loud message” that “Brexit has failed” and to promote “Rejoin the EU” as a “mainstream” call to action.
Image: Liz Truss / Twitter
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