A brand new British-German study reveals an exodus of economically productive people from the UK to EU nations on large scales. A project made up of Oxford University, four Berlin institutions, and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, found a “seismic shift” in the number of UK citizens already living abroad.
The study says that migration from the UK to EU countries has increased by about 30 per cent compared to pre-Brexit numbers. Britons living in other EU countries who decided to obtain EU member state passports as well as their UK ones had increased by more than 500 per cent overall, and by 2,000 per cent in Germany. Co-author of the report, Dr Daniel Auer said, “These increases in numbers are of a magnitude that you would expect when a country is hit by a major economic or political crisis.”
The study also found that UK migrants are among the most educated and skilled of those from any nation. They are also with one of the highest net average income rates. In Germany, UK migrants were among the highest earners, bringing in on average €2,812 a month in 2019. There are now about 1.2 million British citizens living in the EU, between 120,000 and 150,000 of which are in Germany.
Some 31,600 Brits have been granted dual British/German citizenship in the four years since the Brexit referendum in 2016. The report says about half of all British citizens living in Germany will have dual UK/German nationality by the end of 2020. Co-author of the report Daniel Tetlow was quoted as saying, “We're observing a new social migration phenomenon and a redefining of what it means to be British-European. In 2019, Brits came in just behind Turks in numbers receiving German citizenship – way ahead of Poles, Romanians, Iraqis or Syrians, whom you might otherwise expect to be more eagerly applying for German/EU citizenship.”
