The Brexit vote, 5 years on - what do we know so far?

EU Citizens in Scotland

Behind each headline statistic lie many individual life stories. This is particularly true of the many EU citizens who have chosen to make Scotland their home.

With the end of the EU Settled Status (EUSS) scheme by July 2021, potentially hundreds of thousands of EU citizens could find themselves in a 'legal limbo' according to a recent report by the UK in a Changing Europe think tank^[28]. Home Office figures show that 5,605,800 applications were received to the EUSS up to 31 May 2021, 276,600 of which were from Scotland^[29]. Of the Scottish applications, around 8,100 were received in May alone. Whilst many have managed to successfully secure settled or pre-settled status, the UK in a Changing Europe report shows there might be hundreds of thousands of people who are eligible but have yet to apply and will immediately lose their rights of residence. The percentage refused applications has increased from 1 to 2%, while the percentages for withdrawn and invalid applications have stayed broadly the same. If we consider only the most recently concluded applications, however, of the 153,100 EUSS applications concluded in May, approximately 15% were refused, 4% were withdrawn or void and 3% were invalid.