The EU Settled Status (EUSS) application and registration process was introduced by the UK government in March 2019, in a move to preserve the rights of those EU nationals already living in the UK after Brexit.
Applications to the EUSS scheme have now exceeded the official estimate of the number of EU nationals thought to be living in the UK. According to the Financial Times, estimates by EU embassies of the number of their own citizens living in the UK suggest that the British government has underestimated its EU-born population by more than 500,000. For those still to apply, there are now just under 12 months left to make an EUSS application in the UK.
To date (as of June 2020) just over 3.3 million people have received decisions under the EUSS scheme (from 3.6 million submitted applications) in the 15 months since the scheme opened, with 58% receiving settled status decisions and 42% pre-settled status.
These figures suggest the remarkable success of the scheme. It is the largest ever digital immigration application process overseen by the Home Office. The EUSS application is free, can be undertaken by an app on a smart phone and the ‘app journey’ takes around seven minutes. This is also remarkable.
But there are, inevitably, problems. The first relates to numbers, as the Financial Times has shown. It is estimated that there are 3.64 million EU nationals living in the UK, but no data is available on the exact number.
Read more here where we ask: EUSS - a Resounding Success or a Perfect Storm?