1/ Trying to follow what's going on in 🇪🇺 & #Brexit news feels like a full time job. And yet even against that backdrop, today feels pretty extraordinary. Some of the news has particular impact on me personally.
2/ First of all, this morning the proposed legal text on Brexit transition was released. So much for things not changing in transition - the text as it currently stands means 🇬🇧 👨💻 living in 🇪🇺 can no longer vote in the 2019 EP elections.
3/ A pretty major change, right from March 2019. 💥 goes my chance to vote for @janalbrecht @terryreintke et al as I did in 2014. 😡
4/ In this thread @StevePeers explains more about what the proposed text means, and why it means right to vote 🗳 in EP elections ends.
5/ Then at lunchtime the European Parliament voted on #TransnationalLists. My hope here, as a long time federalist and former president of @jef_europe, was that something good could come from Brexit, and use some vacant seats for a list. But no. Voted down. 👎
6/ I'm proud of the efforts of many Greens 🌻 here - @Sven_Giegold and all the folks that backed this idea at the @die_gruenen #BDK18. Support from 50k people in a @WeMoveEU petition was super too. But Conservatives opposed it, and won.
7/ So I now can't vote in the EP elections, and the start of the reform to make the EP elections and parties more European failed. Not a good start to the day. 😢
8/ Then on the 🇬🇧 side, the UK Govt's own economic impact assessment of Brexit scenarios leaked. A write up by @FaisalIslam about it is here: news.sky.com/story/hit-to-n…
9/ The areas of 🏴 that voted most for #Brexit are going to be hit the hardest. The area that was most heavily for Remain - London - will be hit the least. Impact on Northern Ireland also major.
10/ How the UK government gets out of this 🕳 is hard to tell. Their own figures show their own aims - to leave the Single Market and Customs Union - are economically damaging. These figures will be used over and over.
11/ And then 🌞 at the end of the day... Thanks to @jolyonmaugham's excellent work, a Dutch court is referring a case brought by him and Brits living in 🇳🇱 to the CJEU - detail here:
12/ We of course do not know how that will work out, but to have rights to European Citizenship examined in the European Court of Justice is tremendous. It may even answer the voting rights issue earlier in this thread. 👏 Jolyon and team!
13/ So that was today's Brexit and EU democracy news. Tomorrow is another day on this 🎢. /ends
