Travelling to Europe after BREXIT- 10 essential things you need to know

Hey guys, I'm Kat from the Motorhome Travel website Wondering Bird where we share tips and tricks for touring the UK and Europe by motorhome and campervan. Today we are discussing part 2 of our Brexit changes. We've already done a video on what to do if you want to take your dog or your pet to Europe after Brexit and today we're going to be talking about what to do if you want to travel to Europe after Brexit with a motorhome or campervan or even a car. There are several fairly big changes that you need to know about and we're going to go through them all in this video. Before we dive in, if you're new to the channel, hi, welcome, if you enjoy this video and you'd like to get more motorhome or campervan tips for the UK and Europe, by all means, we'd love it if you subscribe and click the little bell, you'll be notified when the next video is available for you. Right, let's dive in. I've got lots of notes, so forgive me if I look down every now and then to check them because I don't want to tell you something that's wrong, but there are 10-ish, possibly a few more things that you need to know about before you travel to Europe now that Brexit has been gone, finished and is done. The first and most important thing is to check your passport. Now, most of us will have a passport that is in date and most of our passports will have been issued whenever they were issued for 10 years plus, probably around 6-9 months and they went through a period of issuing these passports for 10 years and a bit. The biggest thing you need to know right now is that your passport will expire, regardless of the expiry date, it will expire 10 years exactly from the date of issue. So go and have a look at your passport, see when the issue date is and 10 years from then is when it expires. Ignore the expiry date on your passport because the likelihood is, unless you've had one issued in the last couple of months, that your expiry date on your passport is going to be wrong. So you need to make a note of when your actual passport expiry date is and then you have to allow at least 6 months on your passport before you can travel into the EU. So that's the first thing to be aware of, is go and check your passport and if you want a whole list of these things, there's a whole thing on the website, I'll leave a link to it in the notes for you, you can go through and work your way through them which might make life a little bit easier for you. So first thing, passport. Second thing is get your travel insurance and your medical card sorted. So if you have an EHIC card that is currently still valid, it will still remain valid until it expires. If you don't have one, the new card is something called a GHIC which is a Global Health Insurance Card and basically what the agreement now is, is less than it used to be with the HIC. So although there is still a basic reciprocal agreement in a lot of countries in Europe where healthcare is not free, which is most of them, you will be expected to pay for medical treatment. There's a huge great big link on the government website and again I've linked to that in the post on the website which goes through exactly what and where but the advice given by pretty much everybody is get decent travel insurance that will cover you for medical issues and if you have got a medical condition, you will need to speak to your travel insurer and possibly your doctor to make sure that you're carrying the correct paperwork in case anything should happen whilst you are in the EU. So that's definitely something to be aware of and that's a big change. Also while I'm on the topic, do not pay for a GHIC card or even an EHIC card, I'm not looking at one anymore, but don't pay for it. There are websites that are like we will organise this for you and honestly they're free. Go to the NHS website, the link is on my website, go straight to theirs, it's free, you don't have to pay for it as long as you are a UK resident. So don't be sucked into any of these con sites that are trying to get you to pay for them. Okay, section three. Let's talk about documents. Most of the documents that you will need to travel to Europe, whether it's a motorhome, a campervan or a car, are exactly the same. You'll still need your driving licence and yes, your UK issued driving licence is valid for you to drive in the EU and Europe. It's perfectly fine as long as it's in date and as long as you are allowed to drive the vehicle that you're driving, so if your motorhome is over three and a half tonnes, are you allowed to drive it? And there is not an issue using your UK driving licence, not a problem at all. You also need to make sure that you have a copy of your vehicle insurance, you need to make sure that you have a copy of your logbook, in fact I think you need to take your actual vehicle logbook. You need to make sure that your vehicle is of course MOT'd and taxed and you will need a green card. This hasn't changed, you will need a green card from your insurer, you'll need a green card for your vehicle and if you've got a trailer, you'll need a separate green card for that as well. I wouldn't recommend waiting until the very last minute to get a green card, they take three to four weeks to come anyway, at least ours did, but I know a lot of people who when they got them had issues with them, the vehicle details were wrong, there were issues. So I would make sure that you get that in plenty of time and check it carefully when you do get it. You also will now need a GB sticker, not one of the ones with the little European rings on them, they're no longer valid and I may be cynical but I am expecting, certainly the French police, to be bombarding the north of France whenever we're allowed to finally travel there again and pull everyone over and find them if they don't have a GB, proper official GB sticker on the back of their vehicle. So make sure you have got that, clearly you've got to make sure that it is visible, so you probably need one on the back of your trailer as well. Okay, international driving permits. Do you need an international driving permit to go to Europe after Brexit? No. After all of that, you don't need them for most people, you do not need them. So you don't need to go to the post office and get them anymore and if you've already got them, like we already had them, then yeah, it was a shame. Luckily they weren't crazy expensive. But no, the agreement is now that you don't need an international driving permit, unless you only have a paper licence, so if you don't have a driving licence card, you will need to get an international driving permit and if your driving licence was issued in, bear with me while I read, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man or Gibraltar, you might need an international driving permit. I'm not an expert on those because my licence doesn't apply to any of those things but if you have a licence issued in any of those countries, you might want to check with the post office, probably the best place that I would go and see if you need it or pop onto the government website. Their website is actually quite good on telling you what you do and don't need and they'll let you know if you need an international driving permit. The other time you might need one is if you're going to hire a motorhome or camper van in Europe, they might require you to provide an international driving permit when, I don't know why they would, but they might, so it's worth checking in advance. Also, while we're talking about that, they might require you to have a code from the DVLA, but that's again worth checking with them in advance if you need one and then you've got plenty of time to get one. Okay, what to do at the border? We are now third country nationals, which is really sad, but we are, so you can't use the EU arrival lane at any place, ferries, Eurotunnels, airports, can't use them. We've got to use third country nationals, which means that you have to have proof of your return or an onward ticket out of the country. So you can't just turn up and I'll be here for however long I like. You've got to have proof that you have got enough money in case there is either an issue or to get you home again and you probably will need to provide proof of medical travel insurance. Now, what you need to provide when will depend probably entirely on what kind of mood the border control guard is in at that time, but the fact is that you will need the option of being able to show all of those things. So it's worth having them either to hand or being able to pull them up on your phone if you can before you get to the border. Okay, let's talk about the whole 90 and 180 day rule. So, if you are a UK resident, you can only spend up to 90 days in any rolling 180 day period within the EU. Now, that includes all the countries that are still in the EU plus, and I am going to read this, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. It does not include Ireland. Ireland have said that UK residents can visit, I believe for as long as they like, but possibly check that, but certainly the 90 day rule doesn't apply from the UK to Ireland. Your passport will be stamped and they are quite strict. Again, some countries are stricter than others. I've heard tale of Americans and we are now in the same boat as Americans visiting the Schengen area sadly, but I've heard tales of them when they've overstayed their welcome and they've literally been banned from coming back into the EU. So, it's worth checking and making sure that the stamp is the right date and everything is correct when they stamp it and also making sure that you don't overstay your welcome. If you are a resident in another country, like we've got our French residency now, you do not get your UK passport stamped because if they stamp it then you're there as a tourist and not there as a resident and it causes all kinds of problems. So, if you have a residency in a different EU country, make sure they don't stamp it even if you've got a UK passport. Okay, there are some countries as well as Ireland that are not included in the 90 day rule. One of those is Morocco. I know it's not technically in Europe, but it's a good option if you want to escape for a bit over winter. Another ones are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Romania. So, you could go and spend your 90 days in one of the Schengen area countries and then you could go to one of those countries that aren't in the 90 days. For example, go to Ireland. You'd have to spend, if you spent 90 days within the area, you'd have to spend 90 days out of it and that makes your 180 days and then you could come back in and do another 90 days in the Schengen area. Of course, you have to keep a track and there's a tracker. I've got a link to it on my website which will tell you when you go in and out of the Schengen area and you can put your dates in and it'll tell you how many days you've gone and how many days you've got left. I find it quite unwieldy. I don't like it. If I were you, I'd just keep it in a notepad or get one of our logbooks and you can keep a little logbook in there. But there is a tracker or a short term calculator as they call it that will allow you to look at how many days you've spent in there. But it's definitely worth when you're looking at booking your holidays, keeping a track and remembering it's a rolling 180 days. You only have to spend 90 days within the Schengen area. Okay, do you need a visa? No, not at the moment, but you probably will within the next 12 to 18 months. There is talk of a visa called, bear with me while I look at this, the European Travel Information Authorisation Scheme or ETIAS and that's going to be a visa to allow UK residents to visit, hopefully for longer, but they haven't actually cleared up exactly what the visa is going to be for yet. But that will be coming out within the next, well they're talking by 2022. So that's in the next 12 months. So yeah, we're going to keep an eye on that and see what happens as that develops. Duty free limits. Now we're back to how much alcohol and tobacco and things you can bring in and out, well in, to the UK. So again, I'm going to read this, make sure I get it right. If you're travelling from the EU to the UK, anyone 17 and above can apparently take 42 litres of beer or 18 litres of non-sparkling wine. I'm assuming if you're 17 you can't carry alcohol, you can't legally carry alcohol. But the website, the UKGov website says 17 and above, so who knows. So on top of the beer and the wine, you can also bring in 4 litres of spirits or other liqueur, 9 litres of fortified or sparkling wine, up to 22% alcohol. And you can split that allowance, so you can have a little bit of one or a little bit of another, so that's worth, and again the link to the Gov website is on our website, if you look in the show notes it will show you exactly where you can find out. And tobacco, you can either bring in 1 of 200 cigarettes, 100 cigarillos, 50 cigars or 250 grams of tobacco, or 200 sticks for a tobacco electrocuted device. And again you can mix and match that allowance so you can split it up between lots. If you're found to be bringing in more than that allowance, you'll end up paying your VAT and import tax on everything, not just the stuff above your allowance, on the whole lot, so be very careful how much you bring in. You're also not allowed any longer to take meat or milk products or products which contain them out of the UK into Europe. Now I understand the meat and the milk, there is some leniency towards baby products and also pet food, pet food apparently on some, if you have a specialist diet you're allowed to take some pet food out. But if you're caught with a sausage roll, I'm not sure whether they're going to care or not, I'll be honest. But the Government website says you're not allowed to take products containing meat or milk out of them. I don't know how strict they're going to be about that, and like if you have a cake which obviously contains milk or something, I don't know, I don't know how they're going to be over that. But that's what the rules say. Okay, a couple more quick things before we finish. Phone roaming charges. Now, the phone roaming charges was an EU thing, not a UK thing, so the fact that we could go and travel around the EU and not be charged for using our UK mobile, that was being part of the EU. The fact that that has now gone, the four big networks, Orange Vodafone 3 and O2, they have all said that they're not going to bring back roaming charges. However, I don't know how much I believe them. I know that while we've been in France, we've still got our UK phones and we've had a There is a government law in place that says you are only allowed to be charged up to £45 before you must be sent a text that says, do you want to use more? Now, of course, if you say yes, you can be charged more than that, and if you say no, then you won't have access to your, all right dog, you won't have access to making phone calls or having mobile data anymore. So definitely something to be aware of, but at the moment we are being told that we're not going If you're not on one of the major networks, you'll have to check with your network provider and see what their laws are going to be in regards to coming into Europe and using your phone in the EU. Hi, you've just woken up, let me finish quickly. So the last question I've got before we finish is will your UK bank card still be valid in the EU? The answer is yes. The answer is yes, you will be able to use your UK bank card anywhere that you could use them Now, again, not everywhere except UK bank cards. We found some petrol stations randomly didn't take debit cards, they didn't take credit cards, and often, sometimes vice versa. Occasionally in the EU, they look at a Visa debit card as a credit card. So if it says credit cards only, you might be able to get away with using a Visa debit card, but anywhere that you could use a UK card beforehand, you will be able to afterwards. The only thing to look at is whether your banks are going to be charging you more or anything at all if you're on an account that doesn't or didn't charge you at the moment, you might want to check and see what their new laws are now. So those are the major things you need to know about travelling to the EU now that Brexit has gone. There's nothing majorly difficult apart from the 1908 days, most of it is pretty similar, but just worth being aware of the subtle differences so that you are prepared for everything that you're going to need to do when we can, and we will eventually travel around Europe again. So I hope you found that helpful, thank you very much for your time. Again, if you're new and you'd like to see more videos like this, then by all means subscribe, and I'll see you on the next video. Take care, bye! you