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The big picture So it's happy new year, then, and welcome one and all to 2017, the year when Brexit – assuming Theresa May keeps her promise to trigger article 50 by the end of March – finally gets real. It's already got quite real for some people, of course. The Home Office came under strong pressure over the holidays to do something about its plainly inadequate, and at timesinhumane, application process for permanent UK residency. A Dutch software engineer who has been in the UK for 24 years and a German neuroscientist living in Britain since 1999 received letters telling them to "make arrangements to leave" because of minor paperwork issues. MP Sarah Wollaston also urged ministers to scrap an obscure rule that bars EU citizens who are not working – such as full-time parents – from obtaining permanent residency unless they have taken out private health insurance. The government has repeatedly said the rights of the 3 million-plus EU citizens in the UK have not so far changed and that the issue, along with UK citizens' rights in Europe, would be a priority in the article 50 Brexit negotiations. But Wollaston highlighted the case of one of her constituents who was told his Dutch wife of 30 years was in the UK illegally because she had never been in full-time employment, and said a whole new system was needed: There needs to be something that is very quick, efficient and low cost … There are real people caught up in this. It is totally unacceptable. It is up to politicians to put themselves in people's shoes and see the anxiety it is causing and do something about it." This topic is just one of the many looming complexities of Brexit that – according to Dave Penman, the head of the senior civil servants union – risk overwhelming Whitehall as staff struggle with an immense workload on limited resources: Ministers lack the political courage to admit how complex and time-consuming this will be ... The politics around Brexit are the biggest risk to Brexit. The government is clearly in a situation where they are trying to deny the complexity of it." The view from Europe Europe was pretty much on holiday, but just before Christmas Eleanor Sharpston QC, an advocate general at the European court of justice, delivered herself of an opinion that could have major implications for the UK's post-Brexit future. In a ruling on an EU trade deal with Singapore, Sharpston argued that any sweeping trade deals the EU wants to sign with other countries can only be finalised by the EU and its member states, not by Brussels institutions acting alone. If the Luxembourg court follows its advocate general's opinion (as it generally does) that would mean any future UK-EU trade deal will need to win the approval of at least 38 national and regional parliaments. And as the the Walloons in Belgium recently showed when they threatened to veto a deal with Canada that took seven years to negotiate, that may not be as straightforward as some may hope. Meanwhile, back in Westminster | 
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Welcome to 2017, the year when Brexit gets real. Photograph: Teri Pengilley for the Guardian 
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