and they will be buying food etc. and visiting (any open) attractions.
I can’t see how second home owners contribute an less to the economy than regular tourists.
On the other hand all those buildings closed up for most of the year really do detract from the wonderful village the owners have bought in order to enjoy! Being limited to 3 months in 6 isn’t going to help that and owners should be incentivised to get them occupied as much as possible. The French are very good at regulations, interpretation and adapting thereof, and I am sure they could sort something out if they wanted to.
@toryroo Sorry, but you do sound incredibly harsh. Many of us bought our second homes long before Brexit was on the horizon not expecting that the vocal minority would pull the rug from under our feet. And, Britain is a lot closer geographically to France than Aus, as well as culturally and economically, so I don’t feel that comparisons such as with Aus are relevant
Last time we lost an electrian through senseless actions. Please ex UK people stop being so sanctimonious.
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It was a bit harsh, and I did apologise a few posts after 
, as I explained I’m still very angry about Brexit so was a bit of that bubbling over! i think it is not a bad comparison as Britain is now a third country just as Australia is so all the things like visas / customs forms on post etc are now implemented for the Brits as they are any other 3rd country.
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I find the attitude reflects why many UK people voted to exit. I voted to stay in, I only moved to France after the vote.
The UK government made a large number of promises and unilaterally did things to benefit the huge number of EU citizens in the UK. it did them without waiting as you would expect a modern democracy to do, and it was expected that the EU would reciprocate. It didnt and wont and uses ‘well you voted to leave’ as a replacement for reasonable people acting reasonably. Very sad and rather like the nice Mr Macrons threats rather disappointing.
A little like the vaccine argument, the EU now appears to prefer to bully than to act reasonably, I am greatly saddened by it. Do the rest of Europe really think the UK would bow down to bullying?
No winners here.
Err, France has bent over backwards for brits !
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Did they?
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I think you’ll find, Philip, from everything I’ve read (including statements by Clement Beaune, French Europe minister, and Michel Barnier) that the British side flatly refused to negotiate anything that smacked of freedom of movement. All the indications (at least, from France) are that the French government is still open to doing so. Hence the petition might help give them a gentle push, since every other visa deal they’ve done is based on the principle of reciprocation.
That isn’t how I remember it…
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Errr, legally you/we have never been allowed to stay more than 90 days. That is all that Freedom of Movement allowed without a country being able to impose conditions. It just so happened that France was the only/one of the only countries not to police this and demand that people register here. Many other countries were not as relaxed.
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UK also.
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Take a look at this article in The Guardian - a nice concise explanation
yes it was only France and UK…hence many Brits of years here didn’t bother with C deS
That is a very old article from The Guardian
Which was a negotiating ploy to try to avoid a no deal Brexit.
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Hi Poppy, @Poppyfields
Thank you for your reply.
The reason why I posted a link to that article from 2016, is that Phil had asserted that the UK government had “made a large number of promises…without waiting.”
That is simply not true. I was really saddened and disappointed by Theresa May’s comments whether disdainfully describing people as “citizens of nowhere” at the Tory Party conference in 2016, or describing EU citizens as "queue jumpers " in November 2018. This is following on from the Windrush scandal, and May in the Home Office as a proponent of the ‘Hostile Environment.’
I’m a Belgian/British national and yes I take it personally. It doesn’t mean that I think the EU is perfect, but I do believe in the European project, where it is recognised that persecution has very dangerous consequences.
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