By Manuel Escuder, a member of one of the SY2E – Remain in the EU groups

Here is one example of what the EU can do for individuals.

Until recently, I lived in a remote part of Andalucia, Spain for 18 years. So I was an immigrant, aka UK-Expat.

Because of the remote location of our small olive farm, we couldn´t get postal deliveries. The only real way to get post was to contract a PO box in the nearest town, actually in the post office. This worked very well all the time we lived there; however, the cost kept on increasing each year.

Still not too onerous, until the post office decided to charge per person using the service rather than one single charge as they had been doing all those years. Thus in a household with 2 adults and 2 children, the cost just went up by 400%. I complained to the postmaster to no avail as he was just following the new rules of the organisation.

So, I researched the Human Rights act and discovered that Spain has signed up -along with all other EU countries- to all the provisions of act. One of those provisions allowed me to make a formal complaint on the basis that our human rights were being violated, and we were being discriminated due to our place of residence, being charged for a service provided free to city/town dwellers and furthermore we were actually saving them the cost of delivering mail to our door.

We won!. They recognised our family would only need pay a single charge..