How the UK became the sick man of European tourism
cnn.com
cnn.com
I also imagine that the more border crossing is involved (and, yes, travel between EU countries is "crossing borders" but in a sense less so than traveling to non-EU countries), the more hesitant people are likely to be all other things being equal. I probably still wouldn't travel from the US to Europe at the moment.
Really? This is kind of surprizing. Even with Schengen, you'd want to have a passport when traveling within the EU.
No. Your ID card is enough. You don't need a passport to do something like board a flight within the Schengen zone.
Edit: except Denmark, Iceland and Ireland it seems.
Further edit: OK, so id cards are not compulsory in all EU countries, so I withdraw my comment.
It's not compulsory to have one in Finland.
A funny side effect, similar to the US I believe, is that you need a driving license to buy booze.
There may be some variation by state but you typically need a government-issued photo ID (Added: If they check, most places don't if you're obviously old enough.). Which often means a driver's license but can mean a state ID that you get instead of a driver's license. In theory you can probably use a passport/Global entry card/etc. But the more unusual ID you try to present, the greater the chance some store clerk won't accept it.
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Since October 1, EU citizens can no longer travel to the UK on their ID cards; instead, they must use passports.
"That's enormously important," says Tom Jenkins, who says that around three quarters of Europeans don't have passports, since they can travel around Europe with their ID cards.
"For a family of four, the logistical and cost implications of traveling to the UK become really prohibitive. It affects school trips too -- if some kids don't have European passports, before they'd have used ID cards, but now they'd need a visa. It means schools will either have to exclude kids on grounds of ethnicity -- or they won't bother coming to the UK and we'll see a genuine drop in visitors."
Getting and having a Malian or Algerian passport and then a visa for UK entry sets a high bar for entry.
This is even more complicated than it appears because of jus sanguine and immigration.
If you're born in France, you're not an automatic French citizen unless you're born to a French national. You get the nationality of your parent(s), which might make UK-entry complicated. Only once you're 13 and have lived in France can you apply for French citizenship[1], and even that can take 1-4 years [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_nationality_law#French_...
[2] https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Obtaining-French...
You don't need any ID to travel but it is recommend to have an ID. The ID can be a passport or National ID. It doesn't have to be a passport.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/entry-exit/eu-c...
That and the test procedure craziness, which, granted, was relaxed about a month or so go. Afaik you had to get a test before you entered the plane and another one once you got into the UK, no matter if you were vaccinated, that was costing money (in many cases more than the plane ticket itself) plus it was adding extra stress.
And who knows what rule changes or quarantine requirements I might run into? It's less of a big deal for business travel but things could get expensive in both time and money if it's vacation.
Just something I won't deal with right now barring urgent need.
I very much enjoyed the multiculturalism and there are plenty like me. The period from around 2005 onwards was for me a great time. European housemates, colleagues and cultural influence. It felt good to be part of something that crossed cultural boundaries. We've lost a lot.
I think sometimes the unwelcoming voices are the loudest and are what sticks with us. We'll miss having people like you.
Understandable for you to feel offended by the situation though.
The emotions are still raw. I have good friends and a couple of amazing mentors who I left behind. What a total, utter mess this is...
I assume you are part of an economically privileged group, but to someone who has just lost his job to a pole, the coolness of "european cultural influence" does not mean shit.
Never in history did it turn out to be true when poor people's problems were blamed on some minority. In every instance I can think of the results were disastrous for the minority as well as the poor who were pitted against them.
Rees-Mogg (an avid supporter of Brexit) famously said it would take 50 years to see any benefit from Brexit.
In fact, the areas of the UK with the highest number of immigrants voted Remain (and just in case, EU immigrants were not allowed to vote in national plebiscites).
PS: those xenophobic/racist groups are very very active now after Brexit. They've always had that hatred, it's just now very visible. I'm driving a European car(left side wheel) with UK plates since 2007 (it's a good German car), and it doesn't feel like minority, road rage, looks, shouting etc when they see the left side wheel[after Brexit] is just amazing. Just few days ago woman was shouting in a car park: "I've passed my driving licence here [pointing finger to the ground, repeating multiple times]" with the comments that I shouldn't be driving in her country. Last year I've bought dash cam which I haven't felt was ever needed before and started reporting those hate crimes one by one with the video evidence. And police, fortunately react very swift and seriously to those.
PPS: Europeans shouldn't feel that bad and think that everything is targeted towards them, UK has a huge national racism problem anyways, even for those whose parents are brits, who were born and lived here their whole life. Most recent big example was EURO 2020 finals (football) and the racist comments in twitter / press / public the players received who missed the penalties. And it's not a single incident, it's just a more public example of part of multiple happening every day in peoples lives.
PPPS: there are many brits who voted to leave EU, but doesn't have any hatred towards EU migrants, they have just voted against European Union as an institution and wanted UK to not be part of it. The votes were not targeted only to migrants by some people, but the majority yes. I can't find that ad anymore anywhere (maybe someone has a link?), where ITV, Channel X and others were showing NHS before Brexit: full of migrants from EU in their sport suits and British elderly who doesn't have where to sit and need to wait long lines, because of EU migrants, and then life after Brexit, where NHS is just empty, welcoming every briton, no need to wait and elderly are happy. Those who wondering: nothing have changed in NHS, the situation is even worse now, because UK is short on nurses in NHS, who were largely EU workers.
Meh, what you heard were mostly just the voices of a loud and stupid minority, not he norm in the UK. I don't see any reason to feel offended by that vote result, it's nothing personal.
As an Eastern European myself, I found the UK to be the least discrimating and most fair towards immigrants than the other rich European nations when it came to glass ceilings for foreigners in their society.
Eastern Europeans, and foreigners in general for that matter, hold many top positions in companies in the UK, whereas this is much less accepted in traditional German, Austrian, Swiss, French, etc. companies for example, who are far more elitist and openly discriminatory sometimes [1].
More like 52% isn't it? Granted not every one who voted leave did it to keep out the Poles. But it makes you wonder how many did and which smiles at the grocery store are forced...
Do you seriously expect you deserve genuine smiles from all service employees? And that if some don't do it it must be because of your nationality?
Did it occur to you that maybe some don't smile because they work shit dead end jobs, for shit pay, dealing with shit people as customers every single day for months/years on end?
You're correct it was 52% - however that does not represent 52% of all the public - it represents 52% of the public who turned up to vote. Obviously that still carries the majority verdict for the referendum.
There were 45.5 million people registered to vote in the referendum in 2016 and 28% of those registered voters didn't bother to turn up to vote. The leave vote equalled 17.4m voters. The remain voters equalled 16.1m voters. 13 million people didn't care enough to vote.
(western European here)
That's preposterous.
The funny and insanely ironic thing is, I know many Eastern European and other immigrants in the UK who became British citizens and also voted to leave just to thin out the competition they faced for jobs and real estate.
They had nothing against any nationality, but their narrow minded views and primitive survival instincts kicked in knowing there are many like them out there wanting to immigrate just as they did before and made them pull the ladder after them since they assumed that less immigration will give them more leverage in the future.
The irony is not lost on me, but people are rarely rational when voting and mostly do it on emotions.
"Need" in what way? Sure they didn't need it to live and work there, but traveling with a British Passport gives you way more liberties abroad and less discrimination than some EE ones (I lost count on how often police, public and private institutions in Western Europe would treat me like shit when I showed my EE ID vs my friends with Western nationalities).
And since getting a British Passport is basically a ruber stamp once you satisfy all conditions (which are very simple to meet) and it doesn't force you to renounce your existing nationality like some other countries do, most got it as their second passport.
I think a lot of people underestimate the value of having a powerful passport and what a difference that can make on your experience as a foreigner abroad (and inland as well).
Do you have a reference for this? It might be true, but I live in a small European country and have never met or heard of anyone not having a passport, so it sounds very unlikely to me, though of cause we are a small percentage of the total, but is it really the case?
Most of my familly and friends i France do not have a passport.
> "That's enormously important," says Tom Jenkins, who says that around three quarters of Europeans don't have passports, since they can travel around Europe with their ID cards.
Don't know how true this is though.
Slide 53, Passport ownership.
These numbers are for people that already travelled internationally, before Brexit, so the total number might be much higher.
I was just _a_ source of passport ownership in the EU that I know of.
Not sure how they evaluated the travel restrictions, but in 2020 there were travel corridors between many European countries including the UK, while for most of 2021 to enter the UK there were required PCR tests (usually 3) and home quarantine. 2021 restrictions definitely felt more strict, at least in the summer.
Restrictions for arrivals were only lifted for the vaccinated in the autumn.
> How the UK became the sick man of European tourism
The pattern 'X is the sick man of Y' specifically refers to 'Sick man of Asia' [1]. It's often used as an insult to Chinese people, but an insult they often like to use against other Countries.
Later in the article you then see lots of references to Chinese people not wanting to visit the UK. It sounds like the author spoke to the 'travel experts' (e.g. Marcus Lee, CEO of China Travel Online) and then wrote this article. The truth is, the UK and neighbouring Countries are all extremely close to getting back to normality in spite of a rise in cases.
This is China redirecting from the fact that they have a much larger tourism issue - they have essentially banned all foreigners from entering. Even if you could enter, the CCP have mounted an effective campaign to blame COVID on foreign origins (such as pretty much any bio-research lab in the US), and there is very large anti-foreign sentiment among the population.
If you want to see somewhere crippled by lack of tourism, look no further than Macau which reportedly had 50.2% of their GDP generated by travel and tourism in 2019 [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_man_of_Asia
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1100368/countries-highes...
...no, it doesn't. As even your linked article notes, the phrase originated as the "sick man of Europe"[1], referring to the Ottoman Empire in the mid-19th century. It was later applied to China.
I understand that UK faced great migrational pressure, but they also ended up turning away potential tourists.
Probably did not matter in 2019 when London was a tourism crown jewel. But, it probably matters now.
The rest of "benign" regulations it may accept wilfully.
- ed
for what it's worth, as a Euro-friendly Brit, I hope to visit Stockholm and Sweden generally at least once a decade, for the rest of my life. Love that shit.
All to make sure a couple people’s 86 karat diamonds can stay safely in their vaults.