EU nationals fear discrimination in UK
23:09
A quarter of EU citizens living in the UK do not consider themselves treated as equal to UK nationals, and 10 percent of them intend to leave the Islands after June 30, according to a report by the Independent Monitoring Authority for the Citizens' Rights Agreements (IMA).
Women and young people living outside big cities are more uncertain of their fate. When asked what factors most influenced their fear of losing their rights, the respondents most often indicated low trust in the government of Boris Johnson, the course of the Brexit process, fear of worse treatment of people with settled status, and anti-immigrant moods in their environment.
The report indicates that Polish citizens living in Great Britain are, next to Bulgarian and Austrian citizens, the most skeptical when asked about equal treatment because as many as 40 percent of them replied in the negative.
According to the data of the British Ministry of the Interior, at the end of December 2020, Polish citizens submitted over 900,000 settled status applications (this is the second-highest result, just behind Romanian nationals). It was granted 78 percent of considered applications, while another 19 percent of applicants have been given provisional status.
The IMA is an independent civil rights contract monitoring body that protects the rights of EU citizens and the European Free Trade Association (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Norway) in the UK and Gibraltar.
