To ask some basic questions about Brexit?

[Notmyusual80]

There are some things I don’t understand (and feel a bit stupid about) Please don’t roll your eyes at me! I’m a remainer, if that makes any difference.

1. Why exactly will it be harder to travel/work/ live in the EU if we leave? Is it just that we’ll need Visas? If so, that’s not really that difficult, is it?

1. Why might we have problems getting hold of some medicines?

1. And the backstop - so when we leave, NI will eventually have a hard border with the rest of Ireland so imports/exports will incur costs, yes? And this could create a divide/tensions between them like in the bad old days.

Getting visas can be pretty difficult. It can be expensive, time-consuming, and downright impossible in some cases, depending on your skills, salary, employment prospects etc. It's not necessarily an insurmountable barrier but it's quite an extra layer of hassle when employing people. In the past we have employed less qualified people who didn't need a visa, over a more qualified person who needed one, because of how much sooner they were able to start the job.
Visas are also more problematic if you are making trips at short notice.

It's scaremongering. I'm a remainer and I now cannot stand the remain side.

The visa thing - won't be an issue. Do we have an issue going to Switzerland? Norway? No. Do they to the UK? No.
We are one of the biggest tourist destinations in Europe, so if they tried to charge us for visas, we could charge them back - wouldn't be worth it.Just won't happen.

We won't have problems with some medicines, they could increase import costs, but unlikely. Plus we source from outside the EU.

1. There is something called the resident labour market test. EU employers can only bring in skilled workers from outside the EU if the post can't be filled by someone already settled in the EU. So if someone from the UK applies for a job in France (post-exit) and someone from Romania, say, is qualified for the job and appointable according to the criteria specified, the employer will not allowed to offer the job to the person from the UK ahead of the person from Romania.

Travel is a different matter. That is just about visas. There's no reason why it should be any more difficult to travel to the EU for holidays & visits post-exit than it is to travel to Canada, assuming there are any functioning transport links.

1. A lot of manufacturing takes place in parts of the EU where there is a concentration of appropriately skilled labour and specialist support services. Quite a few pharmaceutical companies don't manufacture products in the UK and they therefore have to be imported. Exchange rate fluctuations might affect the profitability of this, while any disruption to transport might cause interruption of supplies as pharmaceutical companies and wholesalers don't keep large quantities of medicines in stock, as it costs money to store them. They order on a just-in-time basis, which will be messed up if they can't rely on delivery schedules.

1. Very sensitive subject. From the EU's point of view it's necessary to prevent unregulated movement of goods and people into the EU from the UK (including any that have evaded UK immigration and/or customs on their way into Northern Ireland. The people of both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland were promised unrestricted movement under the Good Friday Agreement, while Northern Ireland has been repeatedly assured there will be no barrier between it and the rest of the UK. Either a hard border or a backstop will inflame sectarian feeling and is likely to lead to a resumption of violence.

A lot of people live in the Republic of Ireland and work in Northern Ireland, and vice versa. A hard border would cause huge disruption to their lives.

BBC News often has breaking-down-Brexit / FAQ article on their front page

1. Travel will likely require a visa which will probably be fairly easy to get. It's not in the interests of Southern Europe to reduce the number of British tourists BUT work permits and long term residency may be much more difficult.

Right now if I apply for a job in Germany and am successful then it's theoretically no more hassle for me or my new employer than if I got a new job in Birmingham. If I apply for a job in Australia though it's a lot more hassle as the employer can only advertise it if they can demonstrate not being able to recruit my skill set internally etc.

1. Many medicines are produced in European factories by European companies who hold the patents and suscribe to a rigorous regulatory framework to ensure patient safety. In general we have a "just in time" approach to supply chains. Adding customs checks to the supply chains delays delivery and if the UK is not part of the same regulatory framework then the pharmaceutical companies may not be able to sell to us easily without a regulatory agreement

1. Yes and could cause issues with the Good Friday Agreement which has been keeping the peace in NI. There does seem to be some movement on this with some suggestion that Ireland may have to choose its hard border - either with NI or with continental Europe

PS
UK Visas for non EU citizens are the most expensive in the world.
If the UK charges EU citizens as much as it charges other countries
then people just won't come
and other countries will retaliate

remember that work visas and holiday visas are VERY different things

Irish Border
it will become the external border of the EU
every other EU border has strict controls
that one will too

If you are talking about a holiday visa it is not likely to be hard - just like that US thing you apply for on line or there may not even be any. If work as people say above that will be harder to work abroad so if you had planned to take a job in France it may not be so easy.

There might be queues at borders if we crash out - a lot depends on the kind of Brexit. (Medicines point).

Irish border - yes although there is a lot of will on all sides to keep an open border.

@CarrotVan - "Yes and could cause issues with the Good Friday Agreement which has been keeping the peace in NI. There does seem to be some movement on this with some suggestion that Ireland may have to choose its hard border - either with NI or with continental Europe

What do you mean by that, Ireland choosing a hard border with continental Europe?

There’s been a suggestion from Poland (I think) that there could be an open border on the island of Ireland and customs checks on the Republic’s border with the rest of Europe

THe people saying that Ireland will have to choose its border tend to be Brexiteers pushing for the backstop to be removed. Part of the problem with the NI border (not the only problem) is that it is so long and is crossed so many times every day. For example I think there are something like 10000 movements of livestock backwards and forwards over the border each week (and in some cases these are things like cows going across the border to be milked or move field within the farm etc etc). If we leave the EU then those movements all require considerably more checks and paperwork etc than they do if we are all members of the EU and complying with the same standards.

There is a vast difference between a leisure travel visa and one where you wish to work. That's where the difficulty lies, right now we basically have a right to work in the eu countries.

Many medicines are not just sourced in the eu, the raw materials also are, and labels need to legally comply, and products may also transit the eu, there is a whole set of complexity from labelling to import regulations, and also the other way, for example raw materials exported from the U.K. to the eu, which then is used in manufacture and sent back to the U.K. as a finished product. Systems need to be updated, product data sheets, even websites for example an eu domain name owned by a U.K. entity will be lost. So yes, it could be difficult to get medicine in, more likely there will be delays and an increase in costs.

Ireland I know the least about so won't comment.

My son's medication was made in Israel but the company decided to withdraw it from the UK in anticipation of the UK leaving the EU as their supply chains were directed through EU and th had to adhere to the EMA regulatory procedures. They decided that to set up an independent set of procedures on top for the medication that was to be provided to the UK was too costly, so they withdrew.

Unfortunately because of my son's learning disability he has to take the same brand of medication, as differing brands are different colours and shapes so taking one sort minimises confusion and the risk of overdose. Because he has epilepsy and without it he could have up to 40 seizures a day - his photosensitivity increases the occurrences - it is not possible to do without it.

We had a meeting with 4 professionals to decide on the best brand to transfer him to based on where it was manufactured and the minimum risk that it would be unavailable at short notice. He ended up with the branded version rather than a generic one, which is the most expensive, but the decision was made to safeguard him.

Brilliant responses - just reading through. So how much could a Visa to work in the EU cost?

I'm a remainer and I now cannot stand the remain side. I agree. I wish the referendum had never happened but the mud slinging on both sides is pitiful. The uncertainty is now the enemy. No deal is clearly a disaster though.

I'll take 3. If we went for the Withdrawal Agreement, we would have the space and time to achieve a technological solution to the border that works for everyone. Why do we need it? Two reasons, we signed the Belfast Agreement aka the Good Friday Agreement which said that as part of the peace process there would be no hard border on tbe island of Ireland. Because we were both in tbe EU it wasn't necessary for customs etc and, with greater cooperation it isn't needed for law enforcement reasons. However, here's the second reason, the World Trade Organisation insists you have control of your trading area. Doesn't have to be a hard border but you and the trading area next to you needs to have some sort of way of working it out so you each control the edge of your trading territory. In this case, the two trading areas would be the E.U. and the UK. Now if some sort of technological solution isn't found by the end of the transition period, the backstop kicks in. Until such time as the technological solution is sorted. So we don't breach our obligations under GFA by sticking a hard border in as a quick fix to the WTO problem. WTO doesn't care how you do it as long as it works. Otherwise stuff leaks across borders above and beyond the kind of illegal leaking that might go on anyway- fags, booze etc.
Which is why the WA is a fairly clever way of buying time to sort this out. If, as BeLeavers would have it, the technological solution is available now, then we don't even need the backstop.
Trouble is, it isn't there now. Even the lightest touch technological solution requires ANPR cameras or "special lanes" on roads wide enough to take freight. That's a border. And quite apart from breaching GFA, it creates a target for wankers

And if you have a target for wankers, you need to defend it. And defend the defence. And before you know it, you have police and soldiers involved and the bad old days.

So how much could a Visa to work in the EU cost

It's not really the cost as such, it's the hurdles you'd have to jump to get one and the complexity involved. I worked and lived in a mainland eu country for five years, and as an eu citizen I had a right, but still had a lot of complexity involved in becoming resident and breaking residency in the U.K., and that was with a right to work there. Without that, it would be a much more complex process.

And we have expats there now. We have eu expats here, and our kids are of a generation that many want to have a right to work in other countries. So it's not really how much it costs, it's more about how complex it would be and how long it takes with no automatic right.

There is no issue of free movement with Norway because Norway is part of the EEA, and none with Swizerland because Switzerland and the EU have a bilateral agreement which provides for free movement. This will not be the case when the U.K. leaves the EU.

OP, most of the major industries such as car-making and aerospace , plus banking, will need to relocate after Brexit to take advantage of the EU market, but after the initial massive job losses and rise in the cost of living there will be no change to the UK generally, IMHO.

But of course the Republic of Ireland should have to choose. After all, it created the problem. How about Northern Ireland has to choose, if we're so keen to see civil war again?

The Republic of Ireland is an EU member state. There is zero chance of the EU putting up an international border between Ireland and the continent. It would make one of the main benefits of EU membership redundant I.E freedom of movement. It's just wishful thinking.

Either the UK leaves in name only but nothing actually ever changes (al la the "deal") or there is a hard border and all the chaos which ensues.

ERG wankers would love isolating Ireland from its 26 mates. Not gonna happen.

Gibraltar/Spain raises some similar issues too as lots of people live in one and work in the other and cross every day just to get to work.