INTERVIEW/Andrew Noble: Romanians in UK, more than 1pct of British population; that will bring us closer

Romanians living in the UK, approximately 700,000, represent 1 percent of the British population, and this community will bring the two nations closer together, British Ambassador in Bucharest Andrew Noble says in an interview to AGERPRES.      "The fact that we've got this huge body of people that our countries share - they are Romanians but they're living in the UK, they are more than 1 percent of the British population, we're 66 million and they are 670,000 in the settled status, plus the Romanians who've become British citizens, which is not a large number, but we're certain it's 700,000. That's something that will bring our countries closer together," the diplomat said.      He speaks in detail about the points-based immigration system, for those who want to work in the UK after the 1st of January, as well as about the 140 years of diplomatic relations between Romania and the UK and Romania's evolution over the past 30 years.      AGERPRES: Your Excellency, as we are speaking, the negotiations regarding a trade agreement, a large scheme for a trade agreement post-Brexit are going on in Brussels and London, but there are certain things that are very clear, especially regarding the immigration situation - I mean the way people will be able to work and live in post-Brexit Britain. Could you talk about this a little bit, especially with an emphasis on the points-based immigration, because this sounds a little complicated for the citizens of the European Union?      Andrew Noble: As you said, negotiations are continuing, we prefer to leave with a deal, and so talks continuing is a good thing. But there are certain facts already. We will be outside the single market, outside the customs union, and we will not have free movement of people. So, first thing to say is that most Romanians making short trip to the UK can travel without a visa and that's the most important thing. They can stay for up to six months, they can be traveling on business or for tourism. For people who want to go and live, or work, or study in the UK, they will need to get a visa which they can apply from today to get a visa. And we've simplified the system so they can apply from their smartphone - that's a way to enroll their biometric data and make the system much simpler. For anybody who can't do that, they will need to go to the visa application centre. But everything is online, all British government delivery is online, on gov.uk.      And gov.uk, I can't emphasize enough, in a country like Romania where there are very few government services online, gov.uk really is the source of proper guidance about our system. So if you are going to study, or work, or live in the UK go to gov.uk and type in gov.uk "Living in the UK" and it will take you straight to the pages which explain what you need to do. Now, I don't think people need to be too worried about the points-based system. It is a change in the way that we do our system but I don't think they need to focus on that too much, because gov.uk makes very clear what the requirements are for each category of visa.      For student visas there is no points-based component - you have to have a place at the university, be qualified at the right level of English, have the money to sustain yourself and genuinely to intend to study in the UK. If you're going to work, that's when points-based system does come in and there are elements. For example, in one section of the application, there is a minimum threshold for the salary that you will earn. And that salary, if you have that salary you get 20 points. If you only have a salary of 20,000 pounds a year, you only get ten points. Those ten points you can make up if you have a Ph.D. in a relevant subject, or a Ph.D. in a STEM subject, but that's the extent of where the points make a difference, otherwise you have to have the job offer, the English-language ability, you have to pay the national health charge, but all of this is spelt out on gov.uk really, really clearly.      AGERPRES: Will the point-based immigration system make the relationship between the employer and the employee closer? Because they have to have an employer's paper saying you have this particular income.      Andrew Noble: What you can't do in the future is go to the UK and hope to pick up work. And of course, it is for skilled work that this visa route exists. And the salary threshold is 26,000 pounds a year, which is not a lot for skilled work, and the level of skill relates, I believe, to the equivalent of the Romanian baccalaureate. So, it's not an impossibly high level. We are seeking to maintain the relationship, but our immigration system will now be the same the world over, so candidates for skilled work from Romania will be competing with candidates from North America, Australia, North Africa, India, everywhere else.      AGERPRES: When it comes to traveling to the UK, post-Brexit, there was something in the Home Office paper issued on that, saying that there will be checks of the criminal record and that it will be more thorough. Is this even during the time when people do not need a visa, is this criminal record checking applied only for the visa situation?      Andrew Noble: If you don't need a visa, you just turn up at the border. If you have a passport, you can use the e-gates and you do not have an interaction with another human being at all. If you go with an ID card, then you will have to have the check at the frontier with the border police. But the criminal record check only comes in for people applying for visas. One thing that Romanians really do need to understand is that from October, next year, to travel as a tourist you need a passport. Now, for Brits this isn't an issue, because we all have passports if we travel. We don't have ID cards at all and, therefore, we can't use them for travel. The British system focuses on passports, and if you have a passport already, you go through an e-gate. It's much faster and there isn't an individual you have to convince. If you go with an ID card, you still have to persuade that individual that you are here for the purpose of tourism or short travel. Until October they can travel with an ID card, after that they can't. I hope that isn't going to be a practical problem. I hope we don't have people in September or... I hope people will have applied for passports well-ahead of their intention to travel to the UK. For Romanians who are registered under the settled status scheme, they can continue to use an ID card until 2025. So, different rules will apply to Romanian citizens, depending on whether they're a resident in the UK or resident outside the UK.      AGERPRES: When it comes to the settled status, do you have a particular number of Romanians that got the settled status, or the pre-settled status by now? I heard a number around 600,000 recently.      Andrew Noble: I don't know what the exact number is, but it will be about that. 670,000 have now applied and the number of applications is always bigger than the number who've been fully processed and it's usually about that sort of difference. But the rate of refusal is tiny, so out of 670,000 applications I'm sure that over 669,000 will be successful. The rate of refusal is really, really tiny.      AGERPRES: The United Kingdom is still a place that Romanian students choose to study in. Could you please talk about the changes that will come after Brexit, because I thought that there is a difference if they start studying by August next year - there is a certain status they have - and if they start studying after August next year there is a different situation for Romanian and EU students.      Andrew Noble: Let me break it down, and I might be a bit laborious in the way I express it, but I want it to be really clear. There are essentially three dates when things change. So, the academic year runs September to June/July and there are different rules for this academic year we're in - 2020-2021 - than from 2021 onwards. So if a Romanian students has a place at a British university and arrives in the UK before the 31st of December, they will be able to register under the settled status scheme and they will have to right to UK level of fees and they will have a right to support - government funding. If they arrive after the 1st of January, but before the end of the academic year, they will still have the right to home fee status and to government support, but they will need a visa. And if they go for academic year 2021-2022, then they will need a visa, and they will pay third country fees, not the fees that UK students pay, and there won't be government support available for them. So from the academic year starting in 2021, the cost will be higher. The cost depends on which subject, at which university, so people must to look into that separately, and they have to pay for a visa, and they will have to pay a certain charge for the health service. So, that will be a difference. But we are still getting a very high level of interest from Romanian students, even for the academic year starting in 2021.      AGERPRES: Do they have a scholarship program chance? Will there be scholarship programs that concern students from the EU?           Andrew Noble: I think we're expecting that some scholarships will be made available, but I'm not aware of any yet. And they will not be government scholarships, they will be either from the universities or provided by other providers.      AGERPRES: This pandemic year brought into light the situation of seasonal workers in the European Union and in the world overall. In the Home Office document regarding work and immigration post-Brexit, there is no clear information about that, because it says it's under discussion. Are there any news on this front, because the European Union adopted a seasonal workers directive, so is there any news on the topic?      Andrew Noble: I'm afraid not, as far as I know it is still under review in the Home Office.      AGERPRES: So if there are Romanians go as seasonal workers in the UK next year, they would better not do it until they see…      Andrew Noble: Well, there is no route for them do so. It's work, therefore they need a visa, but it's not skilled work and generally speaking, the seasonal workers might not have the level of English that would be required. Before getting into that, I'm sure there will be a policy statement about seasonal workers, in time.      AGERPRES: On Monday you had a session with British citizens living in Romania, what are their concerns? What are the topics that concern them the most?      Andrew Noble: Well, I don't think they're concerned. I mean the mood of the meeting was very good humoured, very calm. There were questions, but there were not concerns. I think inevitably questions around pension entitlements and social security payments for people who are British and Romanian, that sort of mix, those were amongst the most complex questions. And there are questions for dual citizens. We've had British-Irish citizens who had registered as a British citizen but now might be better off as an Irish citizen. But it's at the margins, I think we've had very close relations with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and [the] Interior [Ministry] in the drawing up of these papers. The Ministry of Interior participated last night and they hosted their own conference last week, which is not usual. Most EU member-states' Interior Ministries have not been that helpful and there are components of the Romanian package which are particularly helpful, like a very long deadline - until the end of next year - for British citizens to register and the fact that British driving licences will be recognized in perpetuity. The Romanian government has used the discretion that it did have to be very kind, very friendly and very welcoming and I think that's reflected in the way that the British citizens here have reacted to it.      AGERPRES: So this is actually extra to the EU package that is given to the British citizens?      Andrew Noble: It's elements that are entirely within national sovereignty. So, for example, I suppose I could get a Romanian driving licence here, but I haven't. If I want to drive through France, I will have to apply for an international driving licence. Whereas the Romanian Government said "If you have a British licence, you can drive on Romania's roads." So you know, it's not the biggest thing, but the big things weren't available, but the Romanian government has been very flexible where it has been able to do so.      AGERPRES: There are several British NGOs that made a difference here in Romania. Will they have the same legal framework? Will there be differences to their activity here in Romania post-Brexit? Will it make their work harder or more bureaucratic?      Andrew Noble: I don't think so, because most of them are NGOs within Romanian law. Many of them started off as British NGOs under British law, but almost certainly they're all now enshrined within Romanian law and that gives them continuity. I'm hoping that they will change a lot, because I hope that the new Romanian government will look at the law on NGOs and, in particular, look at the law on charity. And where there are charitable organizations, I hope that the Romanian government would take a leaf out of the British book to see how we regulate charities, so that organizations that are working for the welfare of people in need, for example, are not taxed, because NGOs doing charity work in Romania, they collect all of our volunteer money, and then they pay tax or they build a building for their charity, and they pay tax. We have a watchdog that' very powerful, to make sure charities are doing charitable work, but as long as they do it, they have improved terms of operating and I very much hope that's what will happen in Romania, as the government that we expect to emerge from the consultation process acknowledges that NGOs doing charitable work perform an essential role in Romania, as they do in the UK. I hope there will be changes, but not as a result of Brexit.      AGERPRES: This year we are celebrating 140 years of diplomatic relations between the UK and Romania. How will things change between the UK and Romania bureaucratically post-Brexit? And how did Romania change in the eyes of an ambassador working in Romania, at least in these 30 years?      Andrew Noble: Bureaucratically - how it will change very much depends on the negotiations that are continuing because there are a lot of chapters in that negotiation, which if they are successful, will allow lots of areas of life to continue as we've become accustomed to. If there were not to be a deal, then it will be more complicated. It will be more bureaucratic, we will have to rely on older ways of doing things. So, at the moment there is an European arrest warrant, if we don't have that, we will have to use a Council of Europe framework, which takes longer. So, let us hope that the negotiations give us the best possible starting point. I think we are at a stage in the development of our relationships where things are getting closer and we are improving more all of the time, I mean on the economic side, a few years ago we were 14th biggest investor, we are now 7th biggest investor, and in 2018, we were 12th, and in 2019, we were 7th. And that's mirrored by companies like Vodafone, Unilever, Liberty Steel and plenty of others. We can see them making the investments, so we can see why the joint stock is rising. I think as Romanian companies join the modern economy, whether it be Hidroelectrica, or Nuclearelectrica, or a whole list of assets that are in the course of being modernized, as they're looking for capital, they will look to London which will continue to be the real European financial centre. So I think that will drive our economies closer together.      And the fact that we've got this huge body of people that our countries share - they are Romanians but they're living in the UK, they are more than 1 percent of the British population, we're 66 million and they are 670,000 in the settled status, plus the Romanians who've become British citizens, which is not a large number, but we're certain it's 700,000. That's something that will bring our countries closer together and I think there have been improvements registered in the tourist promotion of Romania over the last 12 months, often thanks to Charlie Ottley and his fantastic films, and there's another one coming out next year. I think more and more people understand why they should come here on holiday, as well, so that will drive us closer together. In our defence relationship we will have a busy year next year, in bilateral defence terms. I'm sure we already have very close relationship with Romania on many aspects of the cyber challenges, cyber security, so Romania becoming the EU's cyber centre I'm sure will be something that attracts even more British focus to Bucharest. And we're also getting Romanian companies going to invest in the UK. UiPath, but there is a real stream of people looking to the UK, as well, as a place to establish their businesses. So I think it really does feel very constructive at the moment.      And as for the changes, we're celebrating 31 years of freedom from about this date onwards. I'm astonished how much it is important, still, to talk about the differences between Romania today and communist Romania. And I hope that Romanian children will soon begin to be taught about what communist Romania was like and what was life like here for their grandparents and parents when they were young, because it's two completely different worlds, the Romania that I experienced from 1983 to 1986 and the Romania of today. A country in which there was no food, you couldn't talk to people, you had no security about your neighbours and whether they were creating problems for you. No travel, no books, no videos. Quite apart from the fact that it was technologically a different world, without mobile phones or that sort of thing, but you couldn't even make an international telephone call. So, compare that to what we have now, it's impossible to think it's the same place. But I think more than that, I'm very hopeful that what we're looking at for the next four years is a great advance on what we've had for the last four or perhaps an even longer period than that.      Romania has had some difficult recent years on questions like rule of law, on a dependable business environment, Romania needs to collect a higher proportion of the taxes that it is owed, it needs to deliver better services to the citizen. And that's a chicken and egg thing - if you deliver the better services, you get more tax, if you get more tax you can deliver the better services, but it needs a start, and I think the parties who are likely to form a government are all committed to that sort of improvement. So, I think the prospects for these four election-free years are really very good indeed, because there is a real willingness to reform and modernize and to really complete the transformation of Romania. There are bits of Romania that are operating at European or world standard, large parts of Romania are operating at that level, but there are large parts that are not and one thinks of the challenges in some bits of the education sector, in health, in the civil service, and I think these are the areas where an incoming government will have big ambitions to really deliver better for the citizen and that could be a completely different paradigm, so that in four years' time, the difference from four years ago might look very stark as well.      AGERPRES: Could you talk about the checks regarding the rule of law in Romania when it comes to Great Britain, because in comes the EU, the checks regarding the rule of law will be through the budget and the CVM, but now UK has a special person on this rule of law topic. I think the prosecutor.      Andrew Noble: He's not here so much for the rule of law, so much as to improve the judicial cooperation between our two countries. So, rule of law as a question of political economy - is the justice system being hollowed out - well, already for the last year we've seen it being restored. And the package of legislation that the Justice Minister has put out for consultation, when that is enacted, Romania will be going back to a position it was in in 2017. Romania was very close to the CVM deciding that Romania had no longer any need for those special controls. So, I think Romania can get back to that. There are clearly areas in the justice system that need improvement. The justice system needs to be faster. There is the view out there that justice delayed is justice denied, and there are too many cases in Romania that take too long and I'm sure that is something that can be helped.      Our magistrate is essentially there because we have different judicial systems and a very different system of law, and when Romania is asking something of the British system, it asks in Romanian, and when that request gets to London, it's very difficult to work with it, so what our magistrate is doing is helping the Justice Ministry here formulate the request for help in a way that it would be easy to deliver and he's doing the same in both directions. I think we're seeing some early benefits from that, I think some recent court decisions about the quality of Romanian prisons, which has been a factor. The decisions seem to be going in the right direction as there is better understanding and these two very different systems understand each other better, and that's really what our magistrate is doing, as well as specifically helping in the judicial aspects of our common fight against human trafficking. And that will remain a hugely important priority of the Embassy and of the British Government and our liaison magistrate has an important role in that.      AGERPRES: Because the negotiations are still going on, are there specific topics that should be resolved as quickly as possible for individuals, for people, to have a smooth post-Brexit existence?      Andrew Noble: It's a very good question, but I'm not going to answer. You have to admit that the question is quite close to "what's in the negotiations"?      AGERPRES: Because immigration is sort of solved, but are there other topics, regarding the actual individuals, not big trade topics?      Andrew Noble: Well the negotiations cover a very broad range of topics. What will finally be in the deal, if we get a deal, I really don't know. The people who need to do things now are the people who wish to travel to the UK and the people who do business with the UK. That's why I started off by saying that the facts are that we'll leave the customs union, we'll leave the single market, and that means the way of trading with us is different, and where should they look to find what they need to do? gov.uk - So, gov.uk "Trading with the UK" will show you what you need to do to be registered with British customs. (...) There are 6,000 companies in Romania with British capital, how many companies are there that trade, in some form, with the UK? It's a very large number and they need to know what the new system is when we will be entirely outside of the EU system, and that won't be affected by the negotiations. The negotiations are about how that separate trading entity works in the detail, but you will still need to know what about British customs, if you're involved on trade between Britain and Northern Ireland, you'll have to understand the mechanisms that have been agreed for that, as well. So, it's really only trade and travel, at the moment, where people need to make their preparations. If we get a negotiated deal, there will be a lot of footwork that needs to be done very quickly. If we don't get a deal, there will be a lot of footwork that's needed very quickly. And let us see what the negotiators say about the timescales, because it's very close to the 1st of January, as you know.      AGERPRES: We were talking about bilateral meetings in the area of defence between Romania and the UK, next year, could you talk about this? And will Brexit change any of the facts in this area?      Andrew Noble: Brexit won't change anything about our assessment of security and our role within the alliance, where Romania is a very prominent contributor. I don't think I want to say anything in detail about our defence relationship next year, other than to repeat what is already widely known, which is that the Royal Air Force expects to return to be part of the flight zone protection, as we lost it in 2018, but I'm confident that there will be other military visitors, as well, and we have British-based military assets who are heavily involved in the development of the core headquarters here in Romania. It's a very close relationship and one with a great deal of mutual trust. Romania's role both within the Alliance but also as a contributor to peacekeeping throughout the world is an area where Romania has gained great international credibility and we saw that most recently with the mission in Mali where Romanian helicopters and British helicopters were working hand in hand. AGERPRES (RO - author: Oana Ghita, editor: Mirela Barbulescu; EN - author: Razvan-Adrian Pandea, editor: Adina Panaitescu)