What’s Wrong with Right-Hand Drive?

Angus MacCulloch

Political debate in the UK about EU migration always seems to focus on EU Citizens, particularly from Central and Eastern Europe, coming to the UK. In reality the position is much more fluid. Nearly 2 million UK nationals live elsewhere in the EU (see the FT) and movement never goes only one way. There is a constant flow of EU citizens moving back and forth between EU Member States exercising their free movement rights. The difficulty in predicting trends in the patterns of movement was highlighted recently; the “tidal flood” of immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania prophesised by many strident UK commentators proved to be illusory. A pair of recent judgments from the Court of Justice of the EU, the highest court within the EU legal system, highlights the problems faced by other EU Member States when they have a significant number of migrants coming into their territory from the UK and Ireland; because they arrive in vehicles with the steering apparatus on the wrong side …