The last Brits in Strasbourg? What Brexit chaos means for the UK’s MEPs and their staff

For the last time, British MEPs and their staff climbed aboard their specially chartered European Union train in Brussels this week to head to Strasbourg. But, as the UK’s 73 representatives prepared to pack up boxes, offices and flats, there was one question hanging over their “final” European parliament session in the French city: was it really their last visit after all?

With chaos still reigning in Westminster, MEPs could find themselves in Strasbourg – where the European parliament sits once a month – again in April. Or, with a lengthier extension, they could even be fighting for re-election come May. As with most things Brexit, even at this late stage, the future remains unclear.

“I need a sign around my neck that says, ‘I don’t know either’,” says Catherine Bearder, the Lib Dems’ only MEP, standing in her bare office filled with cardboard boxes. A staffer adds: “We’ve had a lot of trolls on Twitter asking us, ‘Have you packed your bags yet?’” The answer is now obvious.

Until this morning, Bearder’s office had been packed with mementos from almost a decade as an MEP, where she has been active in campaigning against the ivory trade. “You’ve missed the elephants – they’re now all packed in that box there,” she says, pointing to crates filled with models given to her by grateful constituents and campaigners.

Although sometimes derided as a rubber-stamp for Brussels, the European parliament gained more power in the 2007 Lisbon treaty and is developing a will of its own. MEPs scrutinise and amend legislation and its growing assertiveness has seen it change laws and block plans on everything from agricultural subsidies to copyright regulation. Last year MEPs even triggered a sanctions procedure against a member state for the first time – Hungary – over violations of the rule of law, pre-empting the European Commission and EU leaders themselves.

Roughly once a month a caravan of officials trek from Brussels to the alternative base – which is mandated by a historical quirk of the EU’s treaties – using French TGV trains chartered by the parliament’s authorities. If Theresa May’s deal gets through parliament, moving the Brexit day from 12 April to 22 May, British MEPs will make the trip one more time to spend a week perched among their boxes. A delayed exit would mean taking part in European elections, and a longer stay of execution.

All this leaves Britain’s representatives and their staff, who are mostly young graduates, with no idea how much longer they have a job for – and where their next pay cheque is coming from. Bearder says: “I feel as if somebody’s got my brain on a piece of elastic. One minute you’re here, one minute you’re there. It is stressful because you can’t plan, you don’t know what’s coming next.”

But despite looming oblivion, work has not stopped for British MEPs and their staff in Strasbourg: there are still votes to be held on issues including controversial copyright directive, the rights of ethnic minorities, and labelling of car tyres. Staffers are getting on with it, but they’re frustrated as they try to plan their lives for the next few months in the shadow of Brexit.

“So many of my friends have given notice on their tenancies in Brussels,” one assistant who works for a British MEP tells The Independent.

“Now there’s an extension and possibly another one around the corner, they still have a job here… people are talking about living in Airbnbs as a holdover until they know exactly what’s going to happen.”

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But others aren’t sticking around to wait and see. A press officer who works for one of the UK delegations says he’s had enough and has already got a job lined up working for the civil service in London – where there’s understandable demand for those who have knowledge of the EU and Brexit.

“It’s about timing,” says the press officer. “I’ve been lucky to land a decent job now and I don’t know if I’ll be able to find anything as good at the end of the year. Especially if it ends up being no deal and we end up in a recession.”

The UK government, which is preoccupied with other matters, has done nothing for the hundreds of UK staff facing redundancy. This is perhaps unsurprising: campaign groups representing British citizens living in the EU have long complained of being completely ignored by senior ministers, who they believe see them as their host countries’ problem. In the two years since the Brexit process began, successive Brexit secretaries have all refused to meet with UK citizen groups – who, despite a popular image as Costa del Sol pensioners, are actually overwhelmingly working age with jobs to keep on top of. Over the same time, EU figures such as chief negotiator Michel Barnier and Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s Brexit chief, have provided regular meetings and consultations with the same groups.

Most MEPs tell The Independent they are angry at the way their staff have been treated. Molly Scott Cato, a Green Party politician who represents South West England, makes clear that MEPs – who have chosen to go into politics – are “fair game” for uncertainty, but office staff are another matter.

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“MEPs’ staff are basically doing public service for their country, yet they’ve been given no information, no support at all from the British government about when their jobs will end. They literally don’t have a guaranteed income beyond this Friday [the original exit date of 29 March], and they’ve heard nothing to counter that despite the extension,” she says.

“A lot of MEPs are working without any staff at all. Half of mine have gone; you have to encourage them to go because you know it’s a job with no future, but to not give them any information at all when they’re basically public servants of the United Kingdom I think is disgraceful.”

She adds: “If it was to say Honda was shutting down, they’d organise training and advice about what you could do next – but we’ve got hundreds, probably thousands of people across the institutions as a whole , losing their jobs en masse if Brexit goes ahead. They don’t know when it is, there’s no clear communication, and there’s no attempt to give advice – they’ve basically been completely shunned. It’s a disgrace the way the staff have been treated.”

The uncertainty, Scott Cato says, reflects what many employers around Britain are facing because of Brexit.

The problems aren’t all logistical: more personally, the uncertainty has also dampened goodbyes. As with any workplace that closes, staffers have been planning their last goodbye drinks and farewells to people they’ve worked with for years. But the news of a delay has left them unsure this week if this really is the last time they’ll work together.

The “big bang” of leaving on 29 March 2019 is no longer happening. Parliamentary authorities say they have contingency plans for all outcomes, but the likelihood is it won’t be obvious what’s going to happen until the last minute.

Everyone in Strasbourg has an opinion on the matter: but the truth is that nobody knows for sure whether the British caravan will ever return, model elephants in tow.