Brexit Busters: Plans to relax rules for young people and musicians

A committee hosted by the House of Lords has a plan to make things easier for professionals, musicians and young people to visit and work in Europe.

In The Guardian today, Saturday, April, 29 is a report on how a House of Lords committee will encourage the government to interact more closely with capitals in the EU to allow better cooperation, despite current Brexit barriers.

Research over six months by the European affairs committee says there are 72 areas where just a few tweaks could make a massive difference to cultural and educational interests in both the UK and EU.

Lord Kinnoull commented, ‘the report is really a laundry list of lots and lots of small suggestions, which you can put in place, that are actually mutually beneficial ideas.’

The chairman of the committee continued, ‘It is not going to be snowstorm. It will be a gradual thing because this trust rebuilding must go on.’

His comments come just after an improvement in UK – EU relations following last month’s Windsor agreement on Northern Ireland.

After hosting the committee of 13 ‘cross-party Brexiters, remainers and beyonders’ it is believed that all 72 recommendations are possible.

High on the agenda is getting music and theatre tours up and running and also school coach trips to and from the continent.

The committee was dismayed at the lack of progress following the end of free movement that enabled musicians to tour Europe.

Kinnoull added, ‘It’s not about the Beyoncés of this world. They can cope with the rules. It’s for the small bands, for the vast majority of musicians. The travel is not about a huge economic activity.’

The report suggests that if the rules were centralised and made simpler, a lot more travel could resume.

The findings also urged renewed efforts to launch mobility schemes between the UK and individual EU countries, in which adults below the age of 30 to work abroad for short periods of time.

Kinnoull. Said, ‘The UK has got such a scheme with Australia and New Zealand, and France has it with Canada. There is no reason why these schemes could not be in place between EU countries and the UK.’

Following the fallout after Brexit, there is still much in the way of rebuilding trust to be done. Only last week a suggestion that UK travellers could soon be using e-gates at airports was met with a lacklustre response from EU representatives.