Earlier this week on Wednesday, 4th of August, the United Kingdom Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announced that visa-free short-term touring will be allowed in 19 European Union countries which are up from 17 earlier this summer.
The list of countries that have confirmed their participation in the policy includes Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden. The UK government then added that formal approaches have been made to Spain, Croatia, Greece, Portugal, Bulgaria, Romania, Malta, and Cyprus to also waive the visa requirement.
Although there remain questions over the prohibitive costs relating to gear and vehicle transport across borders, as well as other tax and duty issues. All of these present the main roadblocks to post-Brexit touring, according to UK musician bodies.
Additionally, musicians in the United Kingdom have expressed concern about Brexit’s impact on touring musicians, specifically regarding potential costly fees surrounding a visa or work permit required to tour the European Union.
The music industry still remains angry in their attitude and are adamant that they still need to do much more. Ian Smith from ‘ukeartswork’ and the #CarryOnTouring campaign argued that the government’s statement was misleading at best and in places “badly wrong”.
He told NME “Yes, we have visa and permit free work in 19 countries – however, what has not been said is that those free periods range from seven days in any one year to 14-30 days to 90 days, all with different reporting requirements. This means reporting said work to either the border police or local authorities prior to entering to work.”
He continued: “I am tired of the spin, and also to be frank this does not help given that there is no visa waiver to eliminate the substantial problem of the 90 in 180 day non-visa nationals rule which all British citizens have to abide by if not legally resident in an EU state and who are beneficiaries of the withdrawal agreement.”
“Let’s make this ultra-clear: the UK government have not created any positive change by ‘engaging’ with individual EU states. They have merely been told the truth of what it means to be a third country non-visa national. Regardless of who said what way back during the negotiations, we need action now and continued action at that!”
This summer in response to these grievances we saw the launch of the #LetTheMusicMove campaign, with artists such as Wolf Alice, IDLES, Poppy Ajudha, and Radiohead among the 200 artists calling upon the UK government to take immediate action in order to resolve the ‘No Deal’ that has landed upon British music – while Elton John actually stated that the government were “philistines” for their approach.
Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat
