EU Expats In UK Fighting For Remain In EU Polls

European citizens living and working in the UK as expats are fighting for an end to Brexit via voting in the upcoming EU elections.

Several European expats are standing for election as European Union MEPs in order to fight against Brexit. One such candidate is a French legal advisor living in Wilmslow and working in London. Once the immediate threat of a no-deal Brexit had receded, Sophie Larroque and several of her British friends founded the UK EU Party, even although none of them had any experience in politics. Once they’d raised the mandatory £15,000, they registered candidates in three British constituencies. Now travelling daily between Lancashire and London, Sophie is hoping to be elected as she sees London and the UK as her forever home.

The determined Frenchwoman isn’t alone, as many European expats now in the UK are targeting Britain’s entire expat community, estimated to stand at around three million. Joan Pons Laplama, a Spanish male nurse who’s lived in the UK for almost two decades, told reporters you don’t have to be born in the UK to love the country and its people. Joan is a candidate for Change UK, the pro-European party formed earlier this year by defectors from Britain’s two established political parties. I don’t, he said, need to have a British passport in order to fight to defend the UK’s place in the EU bloc.

He added he has three British children and is now fighting to ensure all EU citizens in the UK are able to register to vote later this week. Jan Rostowski is another prospective MEP who’s targeting the expat vote and has unrivalled experience in the tricky world of politics, having been Poland’s finance minister and short-term deputy PM. He’s standing for election in London, where he was both born and raised, and has been campaigning in Ealing where there’s a large, well-established Polish expat community. He’s a controversial candidate due to comments on gay rights he’s made in the past, but he’s now insisting his views have changed.