Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

BREXIT

Brexit planning: What you’ll need to do if there’s no deal

The British government released another 28 "technical notices" on Thursday to help UK citizens prepare for life in the event that UK crashes out of Europe without reaching a deal with Brussels. Here's what you need to be prepared for.

Published: 13 September 2018 16:26 CEST
Brexit planning: What you'll need to do if there's no deal
Be prepared: Your driving licence could invalid and your passport out of date. Photo: Deposit photos

The 28 technical notices were published on Thursday afternoon after a long meeting between British Prime Minister Theresa May and her cabinet to discuss Brexit.

The government insists it is still likely to reach a deal with Brussels that will allow for most things – including the rules around driving licences and passports, to continue as they were before.

Nevertheless it feels as though “it has a duty to prepare for all eventualities” including a no-deal Brexit.

Given the increasingly fraught nature of the talks with Brussels and that time is rapidly running out to reach a deal the prospect of the UK crashing out of the EU without an agreement appears more and likely, despite what the government says.

The government has already released technical papers warning Brits in the EU they could lose access to their UK bank accounts and face higher credit card charges.

Here's what the government is warning its citizens when it comes to three key areas: driving licences, passports and mobile phone roaming charges.

And the prospect that driving licences won't be valid, passports could be considered out of date and phone charges could soar have not gone down well in some quarters.

The information below is taken from the so-called “technical notices” released on Thursday.

Risk assessment: Driving in the EU

(AFP)



Before 29 March 2019



Your driving licence is valid in the EU. As long as you hold a UK licence, you can drive for both work and leisure purposes throughout the EU without other documents.

If you move to another EU country to live you can exchange UK licences issued by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) or the Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA) in Northern Ireland, for a driving licence from your new home country.

You do not need to re-sit your driving test.



After March 2019 if there's no deal



Your driving licence may no longer be valid by itself when driving in the EU.

If you move to another EU country to live, you may not be able to exchange your licence after the UK has left the EU.



What you would need to do



If there is no deal with the EU, you may need to obtain an International Driving Permit (IDP) to drive in the EU. An IDP is a document which when carried with your driving licence means you would be able to drive outside of the UK including in EU countries. There are different types of IDP. Which one you need depends on which country you are driving in.

Obtaining an IDP

The IDP will cost £5.50.

You can currently get the 1949 type IDP over the counter at around 90 Post Offices or by mail order from two private companies. This mail order service will cease on January 31st, 2019.

From February 1st, 2019, the government will begin providing IDPs. From this date, you will be able to apply for both 1949 and 1968 types of IDP at 2,500 Post Offices across the UK.

Visiting the EU



After March 2019, if you visit and drive in an EU country, for example on holiday, you would need both:

  • your UK driving licence
  • the appropriate IDP

You would need both types of IDP if you are visiting EU countries covered by different conventions, for example France and Spain.



Moving to or living in the EU


If, after exit day, you become resident in an EU country you would not have the automatic right under EU law to exchange your UK licence for a driving licence from the EU country you're living in. Depending on the laws of the EU country you move to, you may need to take a new driving test in that country.

You can avoid this by exchanging your UK driving licence for one from the EU country you move to or live in before March 29th, 2019. UK licence holders who do this, will be able to re-exchange for a UK licence if they return to live in the UK.



Negotiations


We will be seeking to negotiate a comprehensive agreement with the EU to cover the continued recognition and exchange of UK licences after exit.

In the event that we do not achieve a comprehensive agreement, we will also pursue agreements with individual EU countries.

CLICK HERE for more info

Risk Assessment: Mobile roaming charges

After March 2019 if there's a deal

In the likely event of a deal, surcharge-free roaming would continue to be guaranteed during the Implementation Period. Following the Implementation Period the arrangements for roaming, including surcharges, would depend on the outcome of the negotiations on the Future Economic Partnership.

After March 2019 if there's NO deal

In the unlikely event that we leave the EU without a deal, the costs that EU mobile operators would be able to charge UK operators for providing roaming services would no longer be regulated after March 2019. This would mean that surcharge-free roaming when you travel to the EU could no longer be guaranteed.

However, the government would legislate to ensure that the requirements on mobile operators to apply a financial limit on mobile data usage while abroad is retained in UK law.

The limit would be set at £45 per monthly billing period, as at present (currently €50 under EU law). The government would also legislate, subject to parliamentary approval, to ensure the alerts at 80 percent and 100 percent data usage continue.

Leaving without a deal would not prevent UK mobile operators making and honouring commercial arrangements with mobile operators in the EU – and beyond the EU – to deliver the services their customers expect, including roaming arrangements.

The availability and pricing of mobile roaming in the EU would be a commercial question for the mobile operators. As a consequence, surcharge-free mobile roaming in the EU may not continue to be standard across every mobile phone package from that point. 

In the unlikely event that we leave the EU without a deal, our advice to consumers is to:

  • check the roaming policies of your mobile operator before you go abroad
  • consider what your operator is saying about surcharge-free roaming post-EU exit
  • check your operator's terms and conditions in detail – particularly if you are a heavy user of mobile services in the EU
  • be aware of your rights to change mobile operator (“switching”)

CLICK HERE for more info

Risk Assessment: Passport rules for travel to the EU

Rules for passports

The rules for travel to most countries in Europe will change if the UK leaves the European Union (EU) with no deal.

If there's no deal:

If you plan to travel to the Schengen area after March 29th 2019, to avoid any possibility of your adult British passport not complying with the Schengen Border Code we suggest that you check the issue date and make sure your passport is no older than nine years and six months on the day of travel.

For example, if you're planning to travel to the Schengen area on March 30th, 2019, your passport should have an issue date on or after October 1st, 2009.

If your passport does not meet these criteria, you may be denied entry to any of the Schengen area countries, and you should renew your passport before you travel.

After March 29th 2019:

You should have six months left on your passport from your date of arrival. This applies to adult and child passports.

If you renewed a 10 year adult passport before it expired, extra months may have been added to your passport's expiry date. These extra months will not count.

The new rules will apply to passports issued by the UK, Gibraltar, Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Jersey.

Check a passport for travel to Europe

Before booking travel, check your adult and child passports meet the new rules.

CLICK HERE for more info

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

BREXIT

British actor married to Swedish pop star gives up post-Brexit fight to stay in Sweden

Former Bollywood actor Kenny Solomons' imminent return to the UK after failing to get post-Brexit residency has made national news in Sweden thanks to his marriage to the singer from the band Alcazar. He tells The Local why he's leaving.

Published: 19 June 2024 15:29 CEST
British actor married to Swedish pop star gives up post-Brexit fight to stay in Sweden

The QX gala – Sweden’s glitzy, televised celebration of gay culture – is not the first place a man in his 20s would go to find a future wife. 

But that’s what happened to British actor Kenny Solomons.

Solomons, now 37, was already a well-known face in Sweden after playing the superhero in adverts for the internet provider Bredbandsbolaget. He was there to give out an award. Tess Merkel, singer for the nu-disco band Alcazar – one of Sweden’s most successful ever groups – was there to receive one.

“It was utterly insane,” Solomons remembers. “I had had a few drinks and then I woke up the next day in this typical Swedish apartment with kids’ toys everywhere. I was like, ‘what the fuck is going on?'”

“The kids were away with their dad, and Tess went off to work the next day and she left a note – as a joke – on the kitchen table that said ‘sorry I left you, but I took off to plan our wedding’. I thought it was a one-night stand. I was 25 years old and she was 17 years older. I didn’t expect to be married.”

The actor Kenny Solomons (right) arrives at the QX Gala in 2016. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT

But in 2015 they got engaged and then in 2017, they married in the Indian holiday paradise of Goa, making it legal for Sweden with a ceremony in Stockholm City Hall the next year. 

By then, Solomons was so deeply embedded in Stockholm’s celebrity whirl that everything from the Brexit referendum to the deadline for post-Brexit residency had more or less passed him by. It was only when he took a trip to Greece in the summer of 2022, his first international trip since the pandemic broke out, that he realised the mistake he had made. 

“We flew back through Serbia, which is outside the European Union, so as we were coming in through the Swedish border, they said ‘hey, you do realise that you’re going to need to send in a whole load of information’, and I was completely shocked. I had no idea. I mean, to some people, I might sound like an absolute moron, but I just wasn’t aware of it.” 

In some ways his ignorance was unsurprising, given the Swedish authorities’ decision not to contact British citizens directly, even digitally, to inform them of the need to apply for post-Brexit residency by the end of 2021, although there was information published online.

READ ALSO:

Unlike many Brits in Sweden, Solomons was at that point completely integrated, living in the upmarket Stockholm district of Hammarby Sjöstad, and speaking almost exclusively Swedish.   

“It wasn’t originally the plan to do everything in Swedish. It was after I started working and running a business here, that it just sort of kicked in,” he remembers. “After three or four years, I suddenly was like, ‘ah, OK, I’m speaking Swedish. My mother would be very proud, that me, a dyslexic boy from Southend-on-Sea in Essex, could speak even one word in another language!”

Because he only hung out with Swedes and rarely met other Brits, he had simply not heard about the Brexit deadline. 

“All of my friends are in the industry. I socialise among those who also work as artists here in Sweden,” he explains. “When you work as an entrepreneur or an artist, there is nobody to give you that little nudge and say, ‘hey, there is a thing going on called Brexit and it’s going to affect your status here in Sweden’. I had absolutely no idea that it would affect me in this way, and would still be affecting me four years on.”

Looking back, he remembers spending much of 2020 and 2021 desperately trying and eventually failing to save his chain of barbershops and hair-replacement therapy centres from bankruptcy due to the pandemic.

READ ALSO:

When he did apply for post-Brexit residency – nearly a year late – he was rejected as the Migration Agency does not treat ignorance as “reasonable grounds” for missing the deadline. He appealed the decision to the Migration Court, but this month decided he had had enough of waiting, given that rejection was “inevitable”. 

“It’s now 19 months since I sent in my appeal to the Migration Court, and the pressure of not knowing, every day, and the pressure of having to say ‘no’ to career opportunities outside of Europe, and the pressure of not knowing with 100 percent certainty that I can live and work in Sweden in the long run was just affecting my health, and my mental health as well,” he says.

“I hit the wall, was suffering with anxiety, and was incredibly unhappy. So I made the decision.” 

He’s now going to return to the UK and apply for spousal reunion with Merkel. As he has no young children of his own, there is little chance of getting granted the right to do this from within Sweden.

Since he left the UK as a young man, his mother has died, and his 60-year-old father has left their childhood home in Essex and moved to Chester on the other side of England, somewhere he has never been. 

“I guess I’ll go and sleep on his couch,” he says. “I can moan and be upset and say all these awful things. But I have my health and I have a place to go. There are people in a similar situation that don’t have any connections or ties left in the UK any longer, so I’m very grateful to at least have a couch to crash on while I figure out this next step.” 

His father got married in the middle of June, and Solomon’s plan is to return for the wedding party on August 24th, handing in his application for spousal reunion in Sweden within days of arrival. He has no idea if he will then have to wait six months, or two years, before he is granted the right to live again in Sweden.  

“My wife and I, we really always try to make the best out of a bad situation, whatever it is, so when I leave Sweden and start my process from my dad’s I want to continue to be able to give back to this country.” 

READ ALSO:

His next plan is to return to India, where he spent several years before coming to Sweden working as an actor in Bollywood films. 

“You’re gonna think I’m completely nuts. I want to fly to the most northern part of India and run from North India to South India, the whole way, and raise money for Läkare Utan Gränser [the Swedish arm of the global medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)].” 

He says that one of the silver linings to his situation is that as someone involved in Swedish showbusiness, his case has received media coverage, unlike hundreds of other British citizens who have been victims of Sweden’s strict application of the EU Withdrawal Agreement. 

“It’s a very, very great luxury and something I don’t take for granted that I have a platform that can be used for to spread my thoughts and my opinions,” he said, adding that he has also enjoyed sharing information with and trying to help other British people in the same situation. 

Tess Merkel’s band Alcazar performed at the Eurovision Grand Final in Malmö in 2024. Photo: Jessica Gow/TT

Now he’s looking forward to returning back to the UK, where family and friends were in May blown away by the surprise appearance of Merkel and the rest of Alcazar at the Eurovision Grand Final. 

“I had to keep it a secret from my family in England. I couldn’t tell anybody because Alcazar had written a contract with Eurovision,” he remembers. “So my family didn’t know, and they were just shocked when they came on. They Facetimed me just afterwards and said, ‘they really made fun of Alcazar. I felt really sorry for them’.”

But Alcazar, he said, had no issues with being made the butt of a joke about their ‘reunion’ not quite being the hoped-for Abba appearance. The are, he says, “a playful band”. 

“She is that person in real life. She’s absolutely fantastic. She’s an absolute gem. She’s my best friend,” he said of Merkel. “She might say to you, ‘it will be quite nice to have a bit of a break from Kenny. He’s a pain in the ass’. But taking this step is like losing my right hand, because we are so co-dependent on each other – in all the best ways.” 

Membership+ subscribers can listen to the full interview with Kenny Solomons in the Sweden in Focus Extra podcast, which will be available from Wednesday, June 26th.   

SHOW COMMENTS