Shindler group attempting legal challenge to EC Brexit guidelines

Expat WWII veteran campaigner Harry Shindler and his group are mounting a charge to nullify the EC’s Brexit guidelines, thus stopping Brexit.

Harry Shindler and 12 others are petitioning the European Court of Justice in an attempt to have the Brexit negotiation guidelines set out by the European Council annulled. The annulment would reverse permission given by the 27 EU member states to begin Brexit negotiations. The group’s strategy is to target key parts of the guidelines for intense legal scrutiny, with EU nuclear trade body Euratom first in the firing line. Shindler, now 96 years of age, is also arguing that the European Council have singled out and created a group of ‘second-class citizens’ and denied them the right to be heard during the crucial Brexit referendum vote.

The group’s case rests on what they describe as the Council’s formal illegality as regards its authorising of negotiations with the UK and Northern Ireland leading to an agreement setting out the details of Britain’s divorce from the EU. The Euratom Treaty is in focus because the group believes Britain’s withdrawal from the treaty should have been made separately from its withdrawal from the EU. A second example is that the Brexit process was set in motion without expatriate EU citizens having the chance to make their views known over their loss of EU citizenship.

Shindler’s stance and that of his group is that long-stay British expats have been deprived of the right to vote simply because they have taken advantage of their rights to free movement within the European Union, thus negating the principle of equal treatment of all EU citizens. In spite of his age, Shindler is determined to continue with his attempts to get justice for disenfranchised expat voters, telling the media, ‘we’ll get it before my 100th birthday’, in spite of the British High Court refusing his long-term efforts to date.

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