bobd22

Tourism will of course continue irrespective of deals done. However it is the freedom of movement to live and work which is of concern to large majority using this forum. Also what goes with that for us from UK most importantly health care.

Pulaski

Obviously that must be people trying to get in a last visit to the continent before it is permanently closed off to them in 2019!

BritInParis

Yes, it's a well known fact that no non-EU citizen has ever been able to visit or work in Europe

amideislas

Well, again, as the pound devalues (and again, brexit hasn't even happened yet), everything outside Britain becomes expensive. EU or not.

Here in Mallorca, promotion funds are already shifting away from Britain. In fact, the British sex and alcohol mecca, "Shagaluf" is already being actively promoted to Germans, French, Dutch, Scandinavians... The German party zone "Arenal" already has billboards promoting Magaluf. Never seen that before. Most Germans had never heard of it preciously. But they do now...

BritInParis

Before the referendum the pound was widely considered overvalued by 15% in large part because, ironically, it was seen as a safe haven for investors panicked by the Eurozone crisis. After the vote it dropped 15% or so and has remained roughly at that level. WTO tariffs will add about 10% to the price of EU imports in a no deal scenario. Since the pound has already lost 15% against the Euro then even if that happens then EU goods will still be 5% cheaper than they were before the vote. More importantly the UK won't have such high external tariffs which are currently imposed by the EU against non-EU imports, particularly food.

The pound devalued because investors don't like uncertainty. Once the dust settles, whatever the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, and business has a better idea of how they will be operating in a post-Brexit Britain the pound will start to rise again.

What a calamitous disaster

Nothing to do with young Britons becoming far more health conscious in the last couple of years of course...

The strange death of boozy Britain: why are young people drinking less?

Generation Abstemious: More and more young people are shunning alcohol | The Independent

Rise of teetotalism: almost half of Brits shun regular drinking�

More than a quarter of young adults in the UK do not drink alcohol – in data

amideislas

That's nice.

Still, there is the expectation is that there will be a significant drop in British tourism. And while on one hand, nobody wants to see a decline in business, at the same time, there are a lot more Europeans who can afford it, and as a bonus, don't have the special needs that Brits do.

dougal03

BritInParis, while I agree that there is a drop in alcohol drinking with people in UK as told in the press,it appears their good work gets left behind when they go on holiday.

Rotor

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41691656

https://tradingeconomics.com/spain/balance-of-trade

Loafing Along

Two million exceed weekly alcohol limit on SINGLE flight | Daily Mail Online

Fredbargate

I went to Mallorca for my honeymoon, a Brit amongst many

I went back to the same hotel for my 25th, two lone Brits amongst a horde of Germans.

That was 22 years ago so little to do with Brexit

Loafing Along

Until it went broke Air Berlin had Palma as one of their main hubs.. Last year almost 14 Million Germans had Spain as their holiday destination so no surprise you met a few.

BritInParis

No doubt, but as I didn't find a Club 18-30 holiday appealing 10 years ago, I'm certainty not going to mourn their passing now!

carcajou

To think that the EU will require tourist visas of British Citizens is as ludicrous as thinking that Brexit will lead to Britannia 2.0. "Freedom of Movement" and tourism are different things and the latter will be completely unaffected.

Freedom of Movement is a paper benefit to Continental Europeans anyways. To be able to actually take advantage of it, you have to generally speak the language of the country you are moving to, to a native level. A couple years of high school study won't cut it, except for backpacker jobs in the tourism industry. For that you don't need Free Movement, just a working holiday visa scheme.

So while it's great that my Italian wife and her family have the right to live and work in Finland or Portugal - how many Italians actually speak Finnish or Portuguese to the fluency degree required to live a productive life there? Or French Citizens in Poland or Hungary?

The most spoken language in the European Union is English - 51% of the EU population can speak it (at least until the UK leaves). Second place is German at 27%. Take out the native-speaking citizens of both languages, and you see there is not a lot of linguistic operability between the populations of EU countries.

A few years ago the Guardian ran a piece with intra-EU migration statistics; one million Italians had taken advantage of free movement, or 1.6% of the population. For the UK, it was 1%; for France, 0.6%; for Germany, 0.8%; even for Poland, it was just 4%.

So I don't care if Free Movement gets scrapped for the rest of us either. All you really need are bilateral free movement deals to protect linguistic minorities; ie, between Italy, Austria and Switzerland; Belgium/France and Belgium/Netherlands; Finland/Sweden etc.

The UK is not the last place where there will be an in-out referendum on the EU. Anger is rising and you can feel it in the streets, and the politicians are in denial and/or too cut off to see it. The ideals of free movement will not be enough to save the EU in a Continental referendum any more than it did in the UK - not enough people can take advantage of it and they know that even if the politicians don't.

The EU needs a "signature achievement" that benefits far, far more of its citizens than just symbolic things that make elitists feel good.

amideislas

Ahh yes. Another sun, mail, and express reader.

There's always hope that everything goes pear shaped. Always has been. In Britain, anyway.

carcajou

Really? I quoted from The Guardian and Eurostat.

Interesting you didn't try to refute what I wrote, just tried to discredit me through lazy insult.

It's already gone pear-shaped. The longer people like you deny that and keep trying to ignore it, the worse the aftermath is going to be. How many "shock results" that "nobody saw coming" have we had in the past two years?

Yeah all that is because everyone is so happy, it's only us Guardian-quoting malcontents who have a problem.