From
Simon Mason@21:1/5 to
All on Wed Oct 11 08:56:19 2023
Seven years on from the fateful EU referendum, you might expect the 293,000 or so UK nationals living in Spain to have come to terms with Brexit and all the changes it imposed on them. Sadly, for many it’s the opposite. The apprehension and upheaval
ignited by the Brexit vote continues to affect their lives on the continent.
The most crippling effect of Brexit on UK migrants in Europe has been the loss of freedom of movement. Before leaving the EU, UK nationals were able to come and go as often as they pleased.
My husband and I were among the flocks of “snowbirds”, casually migrating between the two countries, working in the UK one month, and getting our sunshine fix in Spain the next. We had bought an old farmhouse in an inland farming community in the
Granada province in 2004, when the Spanish property market was booming.
But the global financial crisis of 2008 hit Spain hard, and the country’s overheated property market collapsed. Rising unemployment meant there was little chance of British nationals securing work. In 2012, we locked up our beloved casa to return to
the UK, principally to find work. It has been relegated to a holiday home ever since. We had planned to retire to Spain permanently one day, but as residency rules have radically changed post-Brexit, we have been forced to rethink.
No longer EU citizens, the British are classed as third-party nationals. Under the terms agreed upon in the European Union Withdrawal Act, non-EEA nationals cannot spend more than 90 days within any 180-day period in EU member states of the Schengen area.
For homeowners in Spain like us, it means visits to Spain are more fleeting.
The property-buying resource Your Overseas Home has been surveying its readers in depth since 2017. Christopher Nye, the site’s senior editor, says there is still apprehension about Brexit among UK property hunters in Spain, seven years after the
Brexit vote.
“In 2017, when there were still hopes for a ‘softer’ Brexit, 49% said that Brexit was delaying their plans to buy a property. In our 2023 survey, 48% said that the 90-day rule was a big problem. So there has been barely any change,” he said. “
Moreover, of all the property buyers’ worries, such as being ripped off by dodgy estate agents and developers, missing family, not settling in, etc, post-Brexit rules are by far their biggest worry.”
Spain does not allow dual citizenship, and the only way for Britons to avoid the 90-day rule is to become a legal resident. British nationals who were living in Spain before the end of the Brexit transition period on December 31, 2020 had their rights
protected by the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement, and they could apply for a Spanish Foreign Identity Card – the Tarjeta de Idendidad de Extranjero (TIE). But acquiring a TIE isn’t easy.
Caroline Williams, a former NHS nurse, moved to the small village of Caniles in Granada province in 2006. She told me of the challenges they have faced post-Brexit. “Making sure that you have the right paperwork to live here has become such a chore.
Obtaining the new photo ID – TIE – takes a lot of time and money,” she said.
The rules around driving in Spain have also changed post-Brexit. Britons registered in Spain have been reminded by the British Embassy that failing to exchange their UK driving licence within the six-month window will result in it no longer being valid
for driving in Spain. Like the TIE card, Caroline said that changing to a Spanish licence was difficult and incurred costs.
But for her it is the smaller, everyday things that provide a reminder that life is no longer the same since leaving the EU. “Receiving parcels from the UK is more difficult. They take so much more time to be delivered. And food prices have really gone
up. You have to go to special shops now to get English food, which was previously available in most Spanish shops but isn’t any more because of exporting restrictions and costs.”
Britons attempting to move to Spain for the first time after the transition period ended and hoping to avoid the 90-day rule now face a raft of paperwork and expense. UK nationals seeking residency must apply for a residency permit. Permits can be
granted for work, business, or study, as a family member of an EU nation, as a non-lucrative (non-working) visa, or as a gold visa for those investing €500,000 or more in Spain.
Kurt and Lucy Wilby, both retired teachers, decided to take the plunge and relocate to Mojácar in Almería in January this year. Lucy told me of the many headaches, obstacles and costs they have encountered in their quest to live in Spain, something
that I and millions of UK migrants like me had taken for granted before Brexit, and which had cost virtually nothing.
“The costs have been horrific. The non-lucrative visa available to us cost £1,100. We are unable to work in Spain and are unable to leave Spain for more than five months in five years. You also have to prove you have €37,000 in your bank each year
for a married couple, more if you have children.
“We have had the additional cost of police checks, medical certificates, translators, and apostilles [government certificates]. The driving licence exchange was another headache.
“Many expats are having to return to the UK due to the 90-day rule. Brexit basically was a pack of lies,” Lucy added.
Illona Mitchell, meanwhile, has had enough. Illona had lived for almost 20 years near Baza, Andalucía, where she had helped to run an animal rescue centre. This September, she moved back to the UK with her 18-year-old daughter plus 12 horses, eight dogs
and two cats, most of which are rescues.
Illona described the export rules for the horses as “horrendous”, and much more complicated than when she moved to Spain from Britain with horses in 2004. “Transporting them back to Britain cost me just under £10,000,” she said. “Nobody seems
to know what the system requires and the stuff they ask you is ridiculous. The red tape and the paperwork will just lead to more and more animals being abandoned.
“I think that I’ve got out at the right time. Brexit has made a mess of everything. It has affected all expats there,” she said.
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead, the writer of this piece, on the beach of Lake Negratín, one of Andalucía’s largest freshwater lakes. Photo: Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead
With Brexit having such a tangible impact on the lives of UK migrants in Spain, I wasn’t surprised to see the Spanish flag among the sea of flags from around Europe being waved at the recent National Rejoin March (NRM) in London. Among the 20,000 or so
anti-Brexit campaigners marching for Britain to rejoin the EU was Bremain in Spain, which campaigns to protect the rights of British migrants living in Spain and across Europe.
After the event, I spoke to Sue Wilson, chair of the group and also – in what now seems like another lifetime – the lead claimant in the court case against Theresa May over the legitimacy of the Leave vote.
“You might expect that after seven long and painful years since the referendum, Brits abroad might have gotten over the stress, sadness and anger that shocked us to the core when we heard the result of the referendum. That has not been our experience
at Bremain in Spain,” she said.
The group has 6,097 members on Facebook, and 26,300 followers on X, formerly Twitter. Members are from all regions of Spain and of diverse demographics. Sue explained how when Brexit was supposedly “done” they expected membership numbers to dip, as
they all tried to come to terms with the situation. But that has not been the case, says Sue, and, if anything, membership is rising.
“With Brexit removing our treasured rights and opportunities, we are now having to fight for everything we have lost, with our hands tied behind our backs. The only way for us to regain what we have lost is to regain our EU citizenship, and there is
only one way to do that – by rejoining the EU,” she said.
Lisa Burton, the group’s vice-chair, who gave an inspiring speech at the NRM talking about the 1.32 million Britons living in EU countries and the freedoms they have lost because of Brexit, voiced the same concerns. “As British migrants living in
Spain, we are literally living proof of the incredible opportunities that freedom of movement can bring. Post-Brexit, most of us would not now qualify for any visa,” she said.
Lisa said the narrative needed to be changed because the “removal of freedom of movement only stops our children, families, and friends, only British people, from having the same opportunities as 450 million of our European neighbours.”
Noting the polls that show 60% of Britons are now in favour of rejoining, and 86% of 16- to 25-year-olds want to return to the EU, Lisa said returning to the union was “now inevitable”. She added: “Our politicians need to do their duty and do what
is best for the UK and all their citizens. Sticking plasters on Brexit will never be enough. They need to stem the damage now, not in five or 10 years. They must start talking about how we can get back into the heart of Europe. We need a seat at that
table for all our sakes.”
For Mike Zollo, who is happily retired with his wife, Carol, spending – without residency – as much time as possible in their house in the village of Sayalonga near Málaga, the most detrimental outcome of Brexit isn’t the bureaucracy and
additional expense, but the loss of EU identity. “It stole from us one of our most prized possessions: our EU citizenship,” he said.
====================
AMEN TO THAT.
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From
Simon Mason@21:1/5 to
All on Wed Oct 11 13:37:54 2023
British business travellers are already being turned back from European countries for breaching post-Brexit movement restrictions that will be applied even more rigorously when Schengen countries introduce electronic travel authorisation in November 2023
– that was the warning delivered by legal and regulatory professionals to a summit for entertainment sector travel buyers staged by the BTN Group in London last month.
The panel also spelled out the liability exposure for employers of non-compliance with the post-Brexit travel rules agreed by the EU and UK. Speakers suggested that, for some roles involving EU travel, British companies should switch to employing workers
with EU rather than UK passports.
The EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which took effect when the UK’s Brexit transition period expired on 31 December 2020, specifies that UK passport holders may only visit the EU visa-free (and vice versa) for 90 days in any 180-day period. In
addition, visits for a wide range of work purposes require work permits.
“There has been a big impact,” said Ben Sookia, EMEA advisory services manager for immigration and visa consultancy Newland Chase. “There is now a requirement for UK nationals to obtain a work permit if they are going to be doing productive work;
and productive work is essentially anything beyond attending a meeting.”
Sookia added that some EU countries offer work permit exemptions to UK visitors entering for less than 90 days. “It depends on where you are going, how long for and what the activity is going to be,” he said.
Travellers getting the complex rules wrong – be it outstaying the 90-day limit or not securing the work permit required for the role being performed – are already reaping severe consequences. “We’ve had five talents refused entry into the EU in
the last two months,” an attorney for a talent management company told the audience.
“Each country has its own immigration rules. Denmark is a good example. If we send a model to Denmark and they declare at the border they are there for a modelling job, Denmark will immediately send them back to the UK. They will detain them until the
next flight. We’ve had one issued with a two-year ban on going back to Denmark, which covers going into the entire Schengen area.”
Both the attorney and Matt Bold, campaigns and policy officer for music industry pressure group UK Music, said people travelling for work are particularly confused by the 90/180 day rule. They do not always realise that leisure travel counts towards the
90-day allowance, nor that the 180-day period within which 90 days of entry are permitted is reset daily.
The need to count days accurately will become even more imperative once Schengen countries introduce the European Travel Information and Authorisation System ETIAS), currently due to launch in November 2023. Similar to the Electronic System for Travel
Authorization (ESTA) for visitors to the USA, all non-Schengen passport holders, including from the UK, will have to apply for and pay €7 for the three-year authorisation to enter the area visa-free (the fee will not apply to under-18s though they will
need to apply, according to current information).
“With the introduction of ETIAS and electronic gates coming in, we have been told that will immediately count the number of days,” the attorney said. “At the moment border officers have discretion [to let through travellers who have exceeded the
limit] but [ETIAS] will pick it up immediately and spit out a notice that you have been here for more than 90 days [in the last 180 days] and issue a fine or a departure notice or whatever it wants to give.
A work permit for a UK national that can’t get an exemption could cost well into four figures and would need to be obtained per person per country
“It doesn’t have to be on your arrival. It could be on your departure or the next time you try to enter the EU,” said the attorney.
Nor is it necessarily only the traveller who is punished for transgressions. “There are potentially penalties for the organisation as well. There is potential reputational damage to your company,” said Sookia.
“Especially if you have an entity in the country where a fine has been received,” added the attorney. “If one of them [your travellers] gets caught, not only is our reputation damaged but it also impacts our ability to sponsor anyone else to keep
coming in and it impacts our ability to keep the people we have sponsored there because it goes on our record as a company.”
In terms of how to manage post-Brexit UK-EU travel, Sookia offered three recommendations. The first is to adopt technology or tools which track the number of days spent by UK travellers inside the EU and vice versa. Some tools can also define which work
permits or visas are likely to be needed based on duration, purpose and destination of the proposed trip.
Second, said Sookia, “Plan well in advance. One key reason is that you will need to adjust your budgets in terms of getting work permits. A work permit for a UK national that can’t get an exemption could cost well into four figures and would need to
be obtained per person per country. Immigration authorities have recently been increasing their government fees for work permits, which would be an additional cost to factor in.”
Finally, said Sookia, “If you haven’t got the budgets for that, one solution is to stop hiring UK nationals where you can to work in EU countries. Hire EU nationals. It’s going to save costs and make your lives a lot easier for everyone from an
immigration and visa perspective.”
Alternatively, he said, “Consider a rotation policy. If you have a worker going in and reaching 70 or 80 days, have a second worker on standby so you never have someone exceeding those 90 days if they are eligible for a work permit exemption.”
The talent company attorney said her company is already taking all these actions. “At the beginning of each year we make our production crews list the events on their schedule, and we created with our IT department an Excel spreadsheet,” she said.
“We hired an additional three paralegals simply to take on doing this research. We count all the days to help our teams work out that if they want to send [the same] production crew to every single event... that’s just not going to be possible
because they go over the 90 days. You need to switch out production crew, bring them back to the UK and send someone else.
“We also have problems with people taking holidays and busting the count. They say ‘now what do we do?’ and the simple answer is we switch them out for an EU national.”
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From
Simon Mason@21:1/5 to
All on Thu Oct 12 00:58:46 2023
The first 100 days of the post-Brexit era has been a “disaster” for the British music industry and the government has made almost no progress in addressing problems raised by visas, customs and other controls, a wide-ranging new survey of the
industry has found.
The research by the Incorporated Society of Musicians, the body that represents the UK’s professional musicians, tour operators and manufacturers, found that 94 per cent of respondents had been negatively affected by the UK’s post-Brexit trade deal
with the EU.
Less than one in 10 music businesses said government guidance was “adequate” in helping to navigate the new obstacles the deal had imposed on the industry, including so-called “cabotage” restrictions on touring vehicles and expensive “carnets”
that touring musicians now needed in order to import equipment into the EU.
“We have clear evidence that the first 100 days of the Brexit Trade Deal have been a disaster for music businesses,” said Deborah Annetts, chief executive of the Incorporated Society of Musicians. She urged the government to do more to help the
industry.
In March, Boris Johnson told MPs that he shared the frustrations of a sector worth more than £5bn a year to the UK economy and promised to “fix it.”
Jake Bright, a freelance musician, spent £1,500 on a visa in case his contract in France was extended. It was rejected as it was not for a firm commitment but he now needs to extend his stay and has to fly back to the UK to start the process all over
again
But the ISM said the survey was clear evidence the industry had “not witnessed any real progress” to deliver on the prime minister’s pledge.
Last week, Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, admitted under questioning from MPs that bilateral negotiations with individual EU member states to find ways to ease restrictions for touring musicians and other parts of the industry had yet to begin.
Under the terms of the trade deal, British musicians who were previously free to travel and work in the bloc must now navigate a complex web of 27 different EU migration systems and visa requirements.
Dowden told MPs that some form of visa-free touring would be allowed in 17 member states, including France and Germany. But he said, other countries had specific requirements for non-EU performers, such as Portugal which required them to undergo criminal
record checks. In Spain, each musician must a pay fees of €600 per person, per night to perform, which has already led to the cancellation of tours.
The government said it had always been clear that the end of freedom of movement “would have implications for professional mobility” and it was important to check each EU member state rules before travelling.
Jake Bright, a freelance composer and music director currently working in France, said the UK government guidance had been close to “non-existent” and had been referred to EU consulates for most issues.
Bright said he had spent £1,500 on visa advisers in order to obtain a visa in case his current contract required him to stay beyond the 90 days in every 180 days that the French rules allow him to work visa-free. But the “just in case” application
was rejected on the grounds that it was not for a firm commitment.
He blamed the wasted money on a lack of clear information. “I’m now faced with a situation where if I’m needed for longer, I need to fly home and apply again, a process that could take a month. That’s not tenable,” he added.
Other chronic issues facing musicians include the need for a £360 carnet to temporarily import equipment into the EU, including a deposit of 30 to 40 per cent of the value of all the tour equipment, from instruments to stages and sounds equipment.
For big touring companies, the ISM said, this could create “huge additional costs” that would render tours unviable. More than 40 per cent of members surveyed said the carnets would have a “negative” or “very negative” impact on their
businesses.
Tarrant Anderson, a director at Vans for Bands, the UK’s largest passenger transport company for the music industry that works with some of the biggest names in rock, told the ISM survey that many grass root acts “would be unable to afford the
additional costs” of the carnets.
As well as customs and border delays, the other major hurdle for the touring industry was so-called “cabotage” restrictions, which now limit the number of stops and countries a UK-registered truck can make after crossing into the EU.
Some 85 per cent of respondents to the ISM survey that operate tours in the EU, said the cabotage limits would cause “moderate” or “severe disruption” for their business.
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