British Conservatories want visa and passport requirements to enter the United Kingdom

British Conservatives want to introduce a visa and passport requirement to enter the UK, once the country is outside the European Union. The end of European citizens' freedom of movement had been one of the committee's promises in favor of leaving the European Union, but in the following months it seemed that the rules should apply only to medium-long term residence permits. According to the Conservatives' proposal, which is ahead in the polls ahead of the December 12 elections, the obligation will also apply to the short ones: Interior Minister Priti Patel specified this in an article published in the Telegraph in which he writes:

"When it comes to crimes such as trafficking in men, drugs and weapons or our inability to stop dangerous criminals entering our country, it is clear that European citizenship is incompatible with the level of security at the border that I and the British people we want to reach »

Even the previous government of Theresa May, supported by the conservatives but less intransigent on Brexit, had announced that in future European citizens would need a visa to enter the UK, but had also admitted that they would negotiate this detail with the European Union . Months later, however, he had made it known that he would not impose the visa requirement on European citizens who would enter the United Kingdom for a short period, so much so that even the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union said they were willing to apply the same measure for British citizens.

Things will change if the Conservatives win the 12 December general election, at least as far as they say. Patel said that every person who wants to reach the United Kingdom will have to apply for an online visa – similar to ESTA, needed to reach the United States – and that identity cards issued by individual countries will no longer be accepted at the border. In fact it means that to enter the UK it will require a passport and a visa, which could discourage several people even considering it for a short vacation (and that the UK could unilaterally decide to reject certain categories of people, for example the convicted of serious crimes).

It is not clear if the Conservatives have put forward the proposal for real security risks in the United Kingdom. According to a report released in 2014 by the British Parliament, every year about a thousand people try to enter the UK using a fake European document. The impression is that the party is trying to move even further to immigration: in the last fifteen years the share of migrants from Eastern European states among those coming from the entire EU – that is, those who usually move in the UK to do low-skilled jobs – it has increased a lot, going from a laughable percentage to just over half.

Months ago, the European Union had made it known that "if in the future the United Kingdom were to introduce visa requirements for the citizens of even one Member State, the existing reciprocity mechanism would be in place and both the three EU institutions would Member States would take action as soon as possible to implement it ".