Monthly Archives: January 2021

LONDON (AP) Trucks owned by U.K. shellfish firms descended on Britains Parliament Monday to protest the Brexit-related red tape they claim is suffocating their businesses.

More than a dozen large lorries one bearing the words Brexit carnage! drove past the Houses of Parliament in central London and parked outside Downing St., home to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Police spoke to the drivers, who could face fines for breaching coronavirus restrictions by making non-essential journeys.

British fishing communities were among the strongest supporters of leaving the European Union, because it promised the chance for the U.K. to leave the blocs complex system of fishing quotas and regain control over who is allowed to fish in British waters.

But now some in Britains fishing industry say they are facing ruin because of new barriers to shipping their catch abroad. Last week, one Scottish fishing boss threatened to dump his rotting catch on politicians doorstep if the situation did not improve.

Fishing rights became a major sticking point in the trade negotiations that followed the U.K.s political departure from the bloc in January 2020, as European nations sought to retain access to waters where they have fished for decades or even centuries.

Under a new post-Brexit U.K.-EU trade deal signed last month, the EUs share of the catch in British seas will be cut by 25% over a 5-year transition period. After that, new quotas will have to be negotiated.

At the same time, Britains exit from the EU means new costs and red tape for exporters a major problem, since Britain exports most of the fish its boats catch.

Some fishing companies say the new restrictions have made it impossible to ship their catch to Europe. Some British fishermen have begun landing their catch in EU member Denmark to keep it in the bloc.

If this debacle does not improve very soon we are looking at many established businesses coming to the end of the line, said Alasdair Hughson, chairman of the Scottish Creel Fishermans Federation.

From seabed to plate, this is not an easy business. People put their heart and soul into making it work, with ridiculously long hours, he added.

Johnson has called the issues teething problems and promised to compensate firms for losses that are due to bureaucratic delays.

But he also claimed fish firms problems were due in part to restaurants being closed during the coronavirus pandemic. And he said there are great opportunities for fishermen across the whole of the U.K. to take advantage of the spectacular marine wealth of the United Kingdom.

Fishing is not the only part of the British economy to experience a bumpy start to 2021 because of Brexit.

The trade deal that took effect Jan. 1 allows Britain and the EU to trade in goods without quotas or tariffs. But that is a far cry from the seamless, hassle-free trade the U.K. enjoyed while it was part of the EUs single market. Companies face customs declarations, border checks and other barriers when they ship goods to and from the bloc. The change has led to shortages of some goods on supermarket shelves as firms reduce the number and amount of shipments they make.

Excerpt from:

UK seafood trucks protest at Parliament over Brexit red tape - PBS NewsHour

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John Lichfieldis a former foreign editor of the Independent and was the newspapers Paris correspondent for 20 years.

PARIS Brexit has become the tale of the Emperors New Clothes in reverse.

Britons have finally understood (five years too late) why the European Unions single market and customs union are important: They make EU internal borders invisible.

Rather than a tale of a ruler who discovers he is naked, this is the story of a country that is discovering the importance of benefits it had taken for granted because they could not be seen.

Invisible benefitsare easy to forget and hard to sell politically. They are also easy to dismiss and easy to lie about. But the cost of abandoning them can be steep.

Since Britain de facto left the EU on January 1, these invisible advantages have become visible disadvantages even calamities.

From the rotting fish on Scottish quaysides to the empty shelves at Marks and Spencer stores in Paris, Dublin and Prague, Britain has discovered what it means to wall yourselfoff from your nearest and most important market.

The lesson could be useful in other EU countries France especially where the European single market is remarkably little understood and frequently misrepresented by both the hard right and the hard left.

The post-Brexit trade deal struck by London just before Christmas allows tariff-free trade across the North and Irish seas. Britain insisted, however, on abandoning the intricate machinery of EU laws that allows barrier-free trade across internal EU borders (and also with Norway and Switzerland). As a result, goods entering and leaving the U.K. from lobsters to airplaneparts, cars and fresh sandwiches suddenly faced new demands for paperwork, health checks and tariffs on components or ingredients from outside the EU.

As a result, British exporters are predicted to face 28 billion in losses this year alone as a result of reduced EU demand and increased frictions and barriers at the EU border.

There isso much complexity, Adam Marshall, the director general of theBritish Chambers of Commerce, told Bloomberg. Its like an onion the more you peel, the more you cry.

Its hardly surprising, in hindsight, that the benefits of the EUs single market set-up have been so misunderstood. Although the single market was largely a British creation pushed in the late 1980s by Margaret Thatcher and conceived in detail by a British EU commissioner, Lord Arthur Cockfield the British public was never really taught to understand what it was all about.

British tabloids and right-wing media, including a young correspondent in Brussels called Boris Johnson, mocked the EU laws harmonizing widgets or appealed to xenophobic fears about EU rules on the free movement of people.

Although some outlets ran counter-arguments on the value of a barrier-free single market from Ireland to Hungary, they were scarcely heard above the misleading guffaws about EU regulation on the shape of bananas or prawn cocktail crisps or condom sizes.

In the run-up to the June 2016 Brexit referendum, some of the most senior British politicians spoke of the single market as if it was just a free trade area.

There is a European free trade zone from Iceland to the Russian border and we will be part of it, Vote Leave, the official pro-Brexit campaign, claimed on its website. It failed to mention that this free trade zone was the EUs single market (which also meant free movement of people, obedience to EU laws and paying into the EU budget).

Boris Johnson, then one of the leaders of the Brexit campaignfamously told the Sun newspaper after the vote: Our policy is having our cake and eating it.He meant that Britain could have all the economic advantages of being in the EU single market and customs union while being outside them.

In December, Johnson, now prime minister, repeated this monstrous lie, telling the BBC anti-Brexiteershad wrongly warned that you couldnt have free trade with the EU unless you conformed with the EUs laws.

That has turned out not to be true, Johnson said. I want you to see that this is a cakeist treaty.

Tell that to Marks and Spencer food addicts in Paris (both British and French) who have been faced with empty shelves for the last two weeks.

Tell that to Daniel Lambert, a British wine importer whose 26-tweet thread, explaining the layer upon layer of problems that he now faces, went viral over the weekend.

Tell that to Scotlands fishermen, one third of whom have been forced to tie up their boats since January 1 because of lengthy delays in what used to be frictionless overnight sales of fish and shellfish to France and Spain. A dozen trucks that usually carry shellfish from the U.K. to the Continent were parked in protest near Downing Street in central London on Monday.

Thepro-EU, pro-single-market argument was always difficult to sell in Britain. Because trade barriers had vanished within the then EU28, it was easy to forget that they had once existed and by what mechanisms the convenient status quo was being enforced.

Whole industries had grown up or expanded because it had become as easy to trade between Birmingham and Bremen as between Lancashire and Yorkshire. Many forgot, or else lied about, the fact that this was not a conjuring trick or a normal state of affairs but something achieved through a network of EU agreements, regulations, common health standards, technical harmonization, customs accords and the free movement of people and capital.

These invisible EU borders are only invisible because the work of regulation and protection shifted to the European level. This is the wonky but essential stuff that journalist Johnson and other Euroskeptics have constantly mocked and misrepresented as EU over-regulation or bureaucratic interference from Brussels or laws imposed undemocratically.

Even now British ministers are dismissing the cross-border foul-ups as teething problems. Some of them may be. Others are the inevitable, and permanent, consequence of leaving the single market.

This wilful ignorance is far from just British.

Frances favorite hard-right commentator, Eric Zemmour, published an op-ed in Le Figaro last week in which he claimed that Britain had won the battle of Brexit. Great Britain will have access to the big European market without customs duties and without submitting to European law, he explained.

Zemmours argument pure Johnsonian cakeism, orgteauisme misrepresented the barrier-free nature of the big European market and air-brushed awaythe costly difficulties facing U.K.-EU trade post January 1.

Some of those post-Brexit problems will doubtless be resolved with time. Others wont, leaving the U.K. with a permanently flat tire rather than a broken wheel.

It remains to be seen whether the false promises of Brexit will remind voters in other EU countries starting with the French, who will cast their ballots in presidential elections in the spring of 2022 that the EUs invisible benefits are not so invisible if you open your eyes.

Read this article:

A Brexit lesson: EUs benefits, largely invisible, hurt to lose - POLITICO.eu

Brexit has beached the fishing boats at Hastings. The two-man crew of Paul Joys boat Kaya have left for shore jobs, after the price of the huss they land fell to just 2p a kilo. Exports to the European Union are Brexit-blighted, with fishers across Britain poleaxed by new costs and regulations, their catches rotting before they reach EU markets. Its costing them millions already.

For the past two years Joy, a passionate Brexiter, has consistently told me he believes his industry would be shafted in any trade deal. Betrayed, sacrificed, he says, outraged at the governments failure to secure British fishing rights for 12 miles around the coast, and now crippled by the export costs. So when foreign secretary Dominic Raab has the effrontery to tell the BBCs Andrew Marr that this is a great deal for the fishing industry, he must know its not true.

Other industries want to know if Boris Johnsons promised compensation for fishing losses means a huge subsidy in perpetuity for this less than 0.2% sliver of the economy? Because the problems exploding in one industry after another, in less than three Brexit weeks, are not going away.

Friction is the new normal. As the chief EU negotiator, Michel Barnier said firmly last week, things have changed for good. UK choices mean mechanical, obvious, inevitable consequences when you leave the single market and thats what the British wished to do. Its not French revenge, or bloody-minded Brussels, but ordinary life as a third country.

The plight of the fishers is just a vivid emblem for the great blow that is falling on exporting parts of the economy. Michael Goves December warnings of bumpy moments upped an octave in the first week of this year, to Britain should prepare for significant border disruption.

That well-staged last-minute-deal melodrama was designed to end Brexit stories, relegating all boring details of the aftermath to the business pages. Not so. The stories are so strong even the ardent Brexit-creating press cant resist them though now those newspapers add a self-exculpatory slant that blames the government for a bad Brexit. Here are some random discoveries since Brexit day.

The Sun warns of Brexits threat to the Cheltenham Festival: last year 180 Irish horses ran, but this year, Brexit leaves Irish racehorse trainers fearing colossal tax bill. Likewise, the cost of taking UK showjump horses across the Channel is prohibitive for their British owners. Motorsport faces similar fees for cars shipped to EU races.

The fashion industry especially Asos-type, cheap end with small margins is hitting a rules-of-origin crisis, paying new duties on its many products manufactured outside the EU. Fun stories in the Sun include the lorry driver crossing the Gibraltar/Spain border whose bottle of Nandos sauce is confiscated, along with all those ham sandwiches snatched by the Dutch. The Daily Telegraph reports the flight of Europeans from England, but not from remain-voting Scotland and Northern Ireland. Farmers Weekly sends up flares about plunging meat prices, due to delayed exports.

All these losses to a host of smaller industries mount up fast. But look at the Sunday Times report on the crisis in a car industry thats worth 42bn in exports, employing 823,000 people, where car-part delays are halting production at some factories. Yet still, most economically deadly is the unseen slipping away of invisibles, where that 80% of the economy in services is already leaking tax revenues. Bloomberg keeps up its grim recording of no likely progress: City of Londons plight laid bare as Brexit deal hopes fade, it reports.

And then there is the unfolding Northern Ireland disaster. Stena Line ferries has diverted its Great Britain-Northern Ireland sea crossings to the Rosslare-to-Cherbourg route instead. The Times headline reads Doldrums ahead in shipping forecast as Brexit complicates customs.

Over the past year I have been following the impending haulage disaster through Manfreight, a 200-lorry company in Coleraine. Its owner Chris Slowey says no, the crisis in the GB/UK crossing is not down to teething problems, as Raab put it, but is baked into the nature of Brexit. His lorries carrying exports to England return empty, doubling his costs, as English exporters find it too costly to sell to Northern Ireland and thats permanent. The Telegraph reports that one in 10 lorries are being turned back at the EU border. Delays will continue: spot checks at EU borders are standard. So will queues, lorry parks and roadside squalor. The pandemic has worsened the Brexit effect, but that was a good reason to extend the transition period.

Its only human to confess to some remainer I told you so glee when ex-MP Kate Hoey wails in the Telegraph, The Tories have betrayed Northern Ireland with their Brexit deal. What on earth did she expect? Thats why Northern Ireland wisely voted remain.

Expect a lot more shocked Brexiters to discover what they have done, the Brexit cabinet itself is on a steep learning curve. Heres one Telegraph columnist: We Brexiters are being blamed for the problems we warned about. In reality, the fault lies squarely with the government and poor planning. Oh the schadenfreude! Thats a sharp U-turn from the Telegraphs too-eager 1 January report from the Dover front: Chaos? What chaos?

As Brexiters turn on each other, Brexit politics move fast. Until now the Tories planned to move on, only reviving Brexit done triumphalism to re-arouse the captured red wall at the election: Labour just wanted to bury the whole issue.

But the scale of the eruptions bursting out in one sector after another requires the opposition to find its footing on this tricky terrain. Many like Paul Joy on Hastings beach are still as passionately pro-Brexit as ever. Fearlessly, Labour needs to regain its voice of outrage that Brexit leaders deliberately shut their ears to what leaving the single market and the customs union really meant. A better Brexit deal really was possible.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Original post:

Brexiters are waking up to the damage they've done - The Guardian

LONDON, Jan 19 (Reuters) - British fashion group Superdry will use bonded warehouses to avoid having to pay tariffs on product re-exported to the European Union, its boss said on Tuesday.

UK retailers, including Marks & Spencer and ASOS , have complained of issues re-exporting goods to EU countries since the end of the Brexit transition period on Dec. 31, with tariffs imposed on items not made in the UK.

Superdry CEO Julian Dunkerton said the firm was well placed because most of the product it sold in Europe was shipped from suppliers directly to its warehouse in Belgium.

We are one of the best prepared and the least affected, he told Reuters.

He said that for product not sent direct to Europe the group will utilise bonded warehouses.

Tariffs dont need to be paid when goods are moved between the bonded warehouses.

Well be bonded by April, both in Europe and the UK, Dunkerton said, pointing out that about 40% of its sales were made in Europe. (Reporting by James Davey, Editing by Paul Sandle)

More here:

Superdry to use bonded warehouses to avoid post Brexit EU tariffs - Reuters

A major British wine agent has described how his business is facing its biggest threat in 30 years because the government did not think through Brexit.

Daniel Lambert who imports up to 2m bottles of wine a year for 300 retailers including supermarkets, said he is unable to import wine from the EU because of the complex and unworkable HM Revenue and Customs system, which requires companies to work out one of 10,000 different combinations to describe the product they want to import.

We were a pretty good little business, we were doing quite well, until Brexit came along, he said.

While we knew Brexit would be a car crash we did not know it was going to be a multiple pile-up in the fog with fatalities, he tweeted in a thread over the weekend that has resonated with thousands on Twitter.

HM Revenue and Customs are being as helpful as they can be, but its not their fault they are civil servants. This is the governments fault and they dont give a shit about business. Boris Johnson said fuck business and this is exactly what they are doing, he said.

We knew they would screw it up, so Im not surprised. Im just disappointed, he told the Guardian.

Lambert, who is temporarily unable to import wine from the EU, said he would survive, but that ultimately consumers will lose out because there will still be a mountain of paperwork even if the initial problems were sorted out.

Wine per bottle on retail will increase by at least 1 per bottle for mass market products; for niche small batch wines you are looking at 1.50 or even 2.00 on the bottle prices. Theres another of those Brexit dividends, he said.

Lambert started his business in Bridgend in 1992 and said this was the biggest threat he had faced, leading him to consider leaving the country when his children complete their education.

His was one of the many businesses that thought they were fully prepared, taking detailed steps to mitigate against the worst possible scenario, a no-deal Brexit, five months ago.

He went as far as setting up a bonded warehouse system to enable all the customs and duties paperwork to be done in house rather than on the border where they would face impediments in a no-deal scenario.

It was very complicated to get to that point and in fact HMRC told us they were surprised at how prepared we were.

By 9 December we had, as far as we were concerned, done everything we needed to do.

Now I literally cannot bring wine in from the EU, he said.

At the heart of the issue is a complex piece of paperwork, called Chief, that was used for imports from non-EU countries before Brexit.

Now you would think that government would want to make using Chief as easy as possible as now there are millions of businesses having to use it, said Lambert.

Wrong, this is the only HMRC system where there is no number to call. Just an email with a five-day turn around. Remember that when government say they are doing all they can to help, said Lambert.

His company was familiar with the system as it had for years imported wines from places such as the US and Australia. The system worked for him like clockwork until Brexit hit.

It requires him to answer 64 questions just to import a bottle of wine and can easily go wrong when it comes to matching a commodity code and a customs procedure code (CPC) as that varies according to the type of wine and its alcohol strength.

If I remember correctly, Chief has 10,000 different combinations depending on what type of import youre doing, depending on the commodity code itself. So you have to get the combination between the commodity code and the CPC code exactly right, otherwise [it] wont allow the declaration to happen, the system wont give you the green light, he said.

Lambert said the system is antiquated and so complex even companies like his that are used to using Chief have come a cropper with next to zero meaningful help from HMRC.

I originally put a query into HMRC on 4 January to ask whats the CPC code for this [a particular wine] and they said it depends on your declaration, after five days. That was the answer. Well thats not really helping is it?

Read more from the original source:

'A multiple pile-up in the fog': wine agent's fury at Brexit red tape - The Guardian

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson calls them the awesome foursome.

These days, two of the four nations that make up the United Kingdom are less keen on Britains prime minister than he is on them. The result could be a big threat to one of his objectives for Brexit: stronger internal relations within the UK.

Kellner is a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, where his research focuses on Brexit, populism, and electoral democracy.

Historically, the UK has never been a fixed entity. Relations between England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have fluctuated. Less than one hundred years ago, the UK comprised all of the British isles, before a bitter civil war led to the secession of twenty-six of Irelands thirty-two counties in 1922.

Tensions have never disappeared. For three decades between the late 1960s and the late 1990s, Northern Irelandand occasionally English citiessuffered from the Troubles, the Irish Republican Armys (IRAs) violent campaign to reunite Ireland by force. The IRA killed more than 2,000 people, their loyalist, pro-UK opponents more than 1,000, and the British army more than 300.

In Scotland and Wales, nationalist parties have made their mark more peacefully. Both countries now have their own national parliaments with substantial powers, but while the appetite for full independence is limited in Wales, it has grown in Scotland.

Brexit has now added a new dimension to these historical tensions. It may well contribute over time to the breaking up of the United Kingdom; only a brave gambler would bet on both Scotland and Northern Ireland still belonging to the UK in 2040.

Let us take the two in turn.

When Scotlands new parliament first met in 1999, one of its members was applauded for declaring: The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on March 25 in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened.

That statement is long on nationalist nostalgia but short on accuracy. Scotlands currency, and hence its overall economic powers, is controlled by Londonas are its defense and foreign policy.

When the UK voted for Brexit in 2016, Scots divided by almost two to one in favor of staying in the EU. But Scotland was bound by the UK-wide result: it was forced to leave the EU along with England, Northern Ireland, and Wales.

This reopened a debate that seemed to have been settled in 2014, when a Scottish independence referendum resulted in Scots voting by 55 to 45 percent to remain in the UK. It was supposed to be a once-in-a-generation decision that offered Scots continuing membership of both the UK and the EU.

Many Scots now feel that their only way to rejoin the EU is to break away from the UK. More than ever before, the nationalist and European causes in Scotland have come togetherand have been gaining support.

For the first time, polls conducted in 2020 report that a majority of Scots now favor independence from the UK. The rise in support is a direct response to Scotland being forced against its will to leave the EU.

In 2021, Scotland will elect a new parliament. The Scottish National Party (SNP) is set for its best-ever result and will remain in power in Edinburgh. Together with the Greens, also pro-independence and pro-EU, the SNP will be sure of a majorityand possibly a large majorityfor a fresh referendum on independence.

Legally, however, Scotlands politicians do not have the power to call a referendum. They can ask for one, but the decision rests with Westminster. Here, the Conservatives enjoy a large majority, and they oppose a fresh referendum. Johnson, the Conservative Party leader, says the Scots should wait forty years before another independence vote.

In the short run, Londons veto will prevail. The long run is another matter. If the Conservatives remain in power in Westminster, and the SNP in Edinburgh, the stage will be set for a constitutional crisis. Reluctantly, the Conservatives may have to give way.

Alternatively, the Conservatives may be voted out of office at the next UK general election. However, the main opposition party, Labour, will find it extremely hard to win outright. A far more likely outcome, if the Conservatives do lose, is a minority Labour government dependent on SNP support. And the price of that support will be agreement on a new vote on Scottish independence.

One way or another, a referendum is likely before 2030. Scotlands departure from the UK is a distinct possibility.

Northern Irelands politics are very different; but its destination may be the same as Scotlands. Its political tribes are driven by religion: the Protestant majority is overwhelmingly pro-British, while the Catholic minority wants a reunited Ireland. For the time being, therefore, most of Northern Irelands voters want to stay within the UK.

But three factors are changing that simple political arithmetic.

First, demographicsdriven by birth rates and migrationare edging Northern Ireland slowly but remorselessly toward a Catholic majority.

Second, a small but growing minority of voters reject the sectarian divide and no longer vote according to their religion.

Thirdand this is the one respect in which Northern Ireland resembles ScotlandBrexit is making a difference. Under the new UK-EU agreement on future relations, concluded on December 24, 2020, the island of Ireland remains politically divided but is economically more united than at any time since 1922.

There are no border posts, rules, or tariffs to impede trade across the 500-kilometer border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic; but trade between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain is now subject to significant checks, resulting in empty shelves in Northern Irish supermarkets.

The demographic and economic logic of Northern Ireland points to Irish reunification in the next 1020 years.

Already, polls indicate a shift in views toward a 50-50 division on whether to leave the UK. Meanwhile, the prospect of rejoining the EUwhich 56 percent of Northern Irish voters in 2016 did not want to leaveis attractive, not just to Catholic nationalists, but also to the growing minority of anti-sectarian Protestants.

Only in Wales do nationalists remain in a clear minority.

By 2040, Johnsons awesome foursome may be a thing of the past. Brexit could end up dividing the United Kingdom more comprehensively than it divides Europe.

See original here:

Brexit and the Gradual Disintegration of the United Kingdom - Carnegie Europe

The Irish construction industry is expected to grow by 15 per cent in 2021 despite the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit-related delays, according to a new report by infrastructure consultancy firm Aecom.

In an annual construction industry review, to be published on Thursday, the group says that while construction output is unlikely to reach pre-Covid 19 levels, it is expected that development in 2021 will significantly exceed 2020 levels.

While 2021 has got off to a bad start for the industry, the report anticipates a strong year for the sector based on a presumption that normal activity will resume shortly as the vaccine roll-out continues.

The report indicates that, in general terms, demand has not been impacted but rather activity has been delayed.

Last year, Aecom estimated the cost of construction increased by about 1 per cent. In 2021, it is estimating a conservative further increase of 2 per cent.

On Brexit, the report suggests access to materials and other equipment has been unaffected to date.

Aecom Ireland director John ORegan said on Tuesday the sector was better prepared than last year to deal with challenges.

Despite the challenges associated with the dual impact of the Covid-19 and Brexit, the projected growth rate of 15 per cent for 2021 highlights the industrys resilience at the moment, he said.

While the first lockdown was very difficult, as an unanticipated event, the sector is now more prepared to effectively manage the associated challenges related to materials, cost, and logistics.

That being said, hospitality and retail has been put on hold and, while significant commercial office developments are proceeding on site, the uncertainty around the shape of the future office workplace will slow demand in this sector.

Mr ORegan said it would be important for the industry that promised rail projects such as the Dart expansion and Metrolink progress as planned.

Our report also suggests that, while we are dealing with two very real threats to our supply chains, the price inflation for 2021 will only be marginally higher than 2020, reporting at 2 per cent, he said.

This is very positive news for the industry and for consumers as there was considerable anticipation that the cost of building would climb sharply in 2021.

Looking ahead, our report highlights that a key element of promoting sustainable growth for the construction industry is ensuring that promised rail projects such as the Dart expansion and Metrolink progress as planned.

While it may not seem priority now, we must double down our commitment to rail development as it will enhance our work life balance, support housing and development outside of our cities and go a long way towards our carbon emission targets.

Mr ORegan also called for the establishment of a national housing task force consisting of industry and public sector players, which could aid the fast and cost-effective delivery of housing across the country.

Along with the benefits of such a taskforce, the economic restart after the coronavirus means there is a chance to improve and speed up the planning and delivery process, which is delaying many pipeline projects, he added.

Original post:

Construction to grow by 15% in 2021 despite Covid and Brexit - The Irish Times

Politicians from Labour and the Liberal Democrats have hit out at the Conservative governments handling on the Brexit touring negotiations with the EU.

AfterPrime Minister Boris Johnsons Brexit trade deal failed to secure visa-free travel for artists wishing to tour Europe(addinghuge costs to future live music tours of the continent will be incurredandpreventing rising and developing UK artists from being able to afford it), a row erupted over who was responsible.

Last week,Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden put the blame for this at the foot of the EUfollowingreports that a standard proposal that would exempt performers from needing a visa to enter countries in the EU for trips under 90 days was actually turned down by the UK government. The EU then hit back,denying claims that they had rejected the UKs ambitious proposals, and that in fact they offered the UK 90 days of visa-free travel but the UK responded with their own proposal of just 30 days. See more info on the different dealshere.

Now, opposition MPs have added to the chorus from artists and music industry bosses calling on the government to take this seriously and fix it, as fans continue to sign the 250,000-strong petition and write to their MPs calling for visa-free travel for musicians and crew to be established.

Tory attempts to shift the blame onto the EU are just not good enough, Labours Shadow Minister for Culture Alison McGovern told NME. Ministers promised time and again that UK musicians would not face barriers to touring in Europe as a result of Brexit.

They have let our music community down and need to fix this as soon as possible. The EU have said they are open to an arrangement so the Tories need to get on with it.

She added: Its been a terrible nine months for musicians and those who work alongside them compounded by an inflexible Tory chancellor unwilling to help those whose employment does not fit his rigid mould.

This problem isnt insurmountable, but it takes a political will that sadly seems to be lacking.

Protestors demonstrate against Brexit CREDIT: Getty Images

Meanwhile, Jane Bonham Carter, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport in the House of Lords, told NME that she has been meeting with the Incorporated Society of Musicians to try and move the situation beyond the blame game.

The government has made a right mess of this for artists, she said. Having promised them that there would be no problem touring in Europe, the deal theyve struck will hammer musicians and performers with costly permits and a mountain of paperwork. This will hit artists at an especially tough time with the COVID-19 related ban on live music but especially young and emerging artists, who may now find touring in Europe unviable.

Carter also described the EU offer that the UK government rejected as reasonable and said that negotiations needed to resume to fix this problem urgently.

The EU made an offer specifically for artists which quite reasonably wanted reciprocity for their own artists; the UK instead made a counteroffer for all business travellers which was more difficult to agree on, she continued. By the way, reciprocity is good for Britain because it means no disruption to seeing our favourite foreign acts here in the UK. Just think of the damage this will do to festival line-ups and so on. The government blaming the EU is predictable but it does nothing to help our creative industries.

She added: The government, quite simply, needs to get back around the negotiating table and secure a better deal specifically for creative industries with paperwork-free travel in Europe for British artists and their equipment.

I believe there is a willingness on all sides to get this done and so the quicker the blame game ends and the sooner the details are thrashed out the better. Some form of reciprocity is going to be key and the government must understand that will be good for Britain.

CREDIT: Getty Images

At the height of the row last week, Dowden had said that it was the EU letting down music on both sides of the Channel not us, before EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said that he regretted that the British didnt display any greater ambition.

In a response to the recent petition, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport wrote: During our negotiations with the EU, we sought a mutually beneficial agreement that would have allowed performers to continue performing across the continent without the need for work permits. Specifically, we proposed to capture the work done by musicians, artists and entertainers, and their accompanying staff through the list of permitted activities for short-term business visitors. This was a straightforward solution for our creative industries which would have benefited all sides.

The EU turned down our proposals on the basis that musicians were providing a service which they viewed as necessitating a work permit and/or visa.

They also added that they were taking all steps we can to make the new processes as straightforward as possible for UK artists performing across the continent.

Last week also saw music industry insiders amplify their fears thatthe current Brexit deal could also prevent UK artists from being able to play in the US, claiming that if talent is unable to acquire international recognition through the usual channel of playing neighbouring European countries with ease, then this could make them ineligible for a visa.

The rest is here:

Opposition parties hit out at government's handling of Brexit touring row - NME