This one wants to sue EU president Jean-Claude Juncker
A group of British ex-pats living abroad have reached out to the public in a bid to fund (yet another) Brexit legal challenge.
Fair Deal for Expats, a pan-European organisation representing Brits living abroad, is seeking £35,000 to pay for two separate court challenges, both stemming from the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union.
One of these challenges may be familiar to Legal Cheek readers. Known colloquially as the Article 50 High Court challenge, but also as Dos Santos or Miller, this judicial review seeks to ensure Article 50’s invocation is conditional on a free vote in parliament. The case is scheduled to be heard by the Lord Chief Justice in mid-October, and Fair Deal for Expats has been a named intervener since the case management hearing in July.
The second legal challenge is a bit different.
Represented by Croft Solicitors and Henderson Chambers’ Patrick Green QC, Henry Warwick and Matthieu Gregoire, the expats are hoping to lodge an application with the General Court of the EU, suing president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker.
This claim concerns allegedly unlawful comments made by Juncker shortly after the referendum result was announced. The Luxembourgish politician is reported to have said:
I have completely forbidden — Presidential order, and this is not my style — commissioners to discuss with representatives of the UK government. ‘In or out’; ‘leave or remain’. I’ve told to all general directors that there cannot be any discussion ahead with British government representatives. No notification, no negotiation!
This statement has riled the expats, who think Juncker’s ‘no notification, no negotiation’ sentiments contradict EU non-discrimination law. In the words of the group’s president, John Shaw:
Juncker’s ban needs to go.
They are seeking to annul this ‘Presidential order’, and are asking for your help to do it. According to the case’s Crowdjustice page, so far the claimants have raised about £2,500 towards their £35,000 target.
This case comes a few months after tax specialist Jolyon Maugham QC put his name to a, now successful, Crowdjustice profile funding what he believes may turn out to be the “most important public law case in living memory” — the Article 50 High Court challenge. In July, law student and solicitor Agata Dmoch followed suit, setting up a crowdfunding page to “give Europeans a voice” in the UK’s EU exit.
The newest legal bid — courtesy of Fair Deal for Expats — comes in the same week reports revealed the government’s new Brexit department has racked up a whopping legal bill of over £250,000 since July.