UK has more EU residents than some member says, says Gove
09 February, 2021
The UK has granted settled status to 4.3 million EU citizens, more than the inhabitants of some of the bloc's member states, a senior minister explained on Monday.
After the 2016 Brexit vote, most employers and universities warned that the UK would haemorrhage talent and that EU citizens would returning home.
EU, European Economic Place and Swiss citizens and their own families can make an application for settled status to continue moving into Britain after June 30, 2021, if indeed they started living in the united states before December 31 2020.
"There were 4.9 million applications and 4.3 million grants of status, so there are more EU citizens in the UK than in a few member states, which is great," Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove told a parliamentary committee.
"It is an excellent advertisement because of this country. Persons have chosen to stay in unprecedented numbers.
"It offers a lie for some of the nonsense that was propagated during the Brexit vote that somehow the UK was much less welcoming or that EU residents would keep, or that there will be injury to our universities or to our healthcare sector."
The UK has more EU citizens than member states such as for example Slovenia, Malta, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Latvia, Cyprus, Croatia and Estonia, EU population figures show.
Established British figures show that EU citizens continue steadily to move to the UK and that there is still net migration from the bloc.
Source: www.thenationalnews.com