Baroness Anelay; Credit: John Chalmers

On Wednesday this week at the British Ambassador's residence in Luxembourg city, the British Chamber of Commerce hosted a members-only Brexit Briefing with The Rt Hon Baroness Anelay, Minister of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union.
Although this is clearly a subject in which, during the negotiating period, very little of substance can be said by any of the involved parties, there were nevertheless some interesting indications that came out of the event which, after a welcoming introduction by British Ambassador John Marshall, was presided over by BCC Chairman Joanna Denton.
Baroness Anelay was in Luxembourg for the 17 October meeting of the EU General Affairs Council and declared herself delighted to have the opportunity to remain in Luxembourg and address the audience of BCC members. She gave a short briefing in which she underlined the importance of Theresa May’s Florence speech and restated some of the key points in it, including that the UK will adopt by default the existing EU legislation which is already in place in the UK, that there should be a “business as usual” transition period after Brexit, currently estimated at around two years, to allow time for new procedures to replace those which already exist, such as the use of the European Court of Justice for dispute resolution, and that Britain will not renege on any of its existing financial commitments to EU Member States.
Baroness Anelay also stated that she believes that sufficient progress has already been made in the talks, although admitting that she would like to see even more, stating, for example, that final agreement on the customs treatment of the border between Ireland and the North was very close.
After her presentation the floor was opened to questions. Chronicle.lu asked Baroness Anelay if she could give some thoughts on the rights of British citizens in Luxembourg, many of whom were disenfranchised due to the 15 year non-residency rule and would not necessarily have voted to leave. She addressed the question of disenfranchisement in stating that an all-party working group is trying to change this for the future, and that the biggest issue is that because the UK voting system, including for referenda, is constituency based, there needs to be a new mechanism created that allows for British citizens who are no longer considered to reside in any constituency in the UK to have a vote that counts somewhere.
Her response to the question of British citizens’ rights in Europe was concentrated far more on EU citizens’ rights in the UK, including a right of return for life, with a small nod at the end to the government’s view that this must be reciprocal. This prompted a follow-up question from the floor pushing her on the question, to which she responded by reiterating that the agreements must be reciprocal. She recognises that people need to be able to have a longer-term view of where they stand than simply up to 29 March 2019 and the next couple of years after that and blamed the EU negotiators for slowing down this process by being too doctrinaire, saying “the EU looks at treaties, the UK looks at people”.
On dispute resolution she said that nowhere in the world did a court have jurisdiction over a third party nation and that clearly that could not be the case with the European Court of Justice and the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, in order to be able to deal with disputes arising between the UK and the EU, an “ECJ-like” body would have to be created. When asked about whether the creation of yet another quango was what the Brexit voters had signed up for, she reiterated that Theresa May had already made the bold (and unpopular for certain hard-line Brexiteers) commitment in Florence that the ECJ rulings would continue to apply for the proposed post-Brexit transition period.
Joanna Denton invited St. George’s School director, Dr. Christian Barkei, to give an overview of how the school’s community has reacted to Brexit: he pointed out that the majority of his pupils have at least one non-British parent and that there is a general feeling, not only of disbelief over the result of the referendum, but also a significant feeling that parents who would normally have sent their children to the UK to further their education now feel that post-Brexit Britain has become a less welcoming place for foreigners to continue their studies and are therefore considering other options. Baroness Anelay lamented that during and immediately after the referendum there had been an unhealthy increase in frequency of negative attitudes towards EU citizens, but assured the audience that this was not the real Britain and that foreign students were very much welcome.
The proceedings were closed by Ambassador Marshall.​