to warn of possible grounding of passenger flights and air freight from 29th March

[Clairetree1]

In order for any plane to take off or land in the UK from the 29th March, we need either

a) an agreement that we can still be included in the European aviation safety agreement, including agreeing to be bound by the European courts.

or

b) The UK civil aviation authority needs to set up its own safety agreement, write all its policies, establish it rules, negotiate with approximately 25 separate governments to come to an agreement that these rules are acceptable for planes flying into and out of their countries ( including the EU and USA), recruit and train several thousand staff, buy and adapt premises, put maintenance and safety procedures into action, to the satisfaction of said 25 governments, under go and pass international inspection and get underway.

My friend in civil aviation has been shouting louder and louder about this for over a year, as time ticks by and nothing whatsoever is done to make progress towards either a or b.

He tells me there was an article about this on the BBC website earlier, but it appears to have been taken down now, at least I can't find it.

Anybody prepared to buy air tickets for April 2019?

Oh no, does this mean there will be no Love Island next year?

@scaryteacher we're a neutral country, we don't need or want RAF air support.

fanfan18

I don't think you read the article.

This part is the key part:

In leaving the EU, though, we drop out of something else, the nature of which is rarely discussed, mainly because it is so much of the fabric of our membership that it has been lost in the mists of time. The thing we lose is our membership of the Passport Union agreed at the European Council of December 1974 - shortly after we had joined the EEC.

This was implemented by the non-binding Council Resolution of 23 June 1981 and updated by the Council Resolution of 10 July 1995 which establish a uniform format for the passports of Member States.

When we drop out of the EU, therefore, it isn't just the Customs Union that goes. It is also the Passport Union. We become citizens of a "third country", reliant now on so-called Paris Conference on Passports and Customs Controls for the basis of document recognition. But, while that establishes uniform standards for international passports, it does not remove from individual states the right to set their own conditions for which documents they recognise.

In EU terms, to facilitate the entry of third country citizens to the EU, the passport issuing countries must appear on a permitted list, currently established by Decision No 1105/2011/EU, with a list of the recognised documents in respect of each country. Details can be accessed through a dedicated Council Website. An example of the actual list here, with the Schengen list here. The list is routinely updated by a Commission Implementing decision.

For a person from a third country to be able to enter the European Union without complications, the country that issued their travel documents must appear on this list. As Decision 1105/2011 helpfully states, "a Member State's failure to notify its position with regard to a travel document may cause problems to holders of that travel document".

The list itself records the individual permissions from the Member States and documents that are recognised – with the relevant conditions. If a country is not on this list, there is no validated evidence that any entry documents are valid – hence the likelihood of there being "problems".

Currently, the UK is not on that list. It cannot be because it is not a "third country". As long as it is in the EU, it is covered by a similar list available for download from the Council website which identifies EU Member States (and the Efta Members, which include Switzerland). But, from midnight of the 29 March 2019, the UK no longer qualifies to be on that list.

Whether the "third country" list will be updated immediately I simply do not know. But, since the list comprises the summation of the decisions made by the individual Member States as to what they will and will not accept, each state will have to make its own decisions and convey them to the Commission. The Commission will have to amend the list, showing the UK as a third country, with all the relevant details.

The point is that we are currently covered as an EU member state and after we leave the EU we will become a third country and will need to be treated as such.

This is not something which should be very difficult to do. It should be easier to fix than the aviation issue, for example. The problem is, if we leave the EU with no deal our situation will immediately change and we will be in a period of limbo until the issue is fixed. That could indeed mean that UK citizens are not able to use their UK passports to travel to an EEA country in the interim.

I live in France. It may be that the French border police would not allow me to use my UK passport to leave France during that period of limbo, in which case I would be stuck here. It may be that the French border police would allow me to leave France and the UK border police would allow me to enter the UK using my UK passport, but I could then find myself unable to re-enter France - where I live - until the situation is resolved.

So if I am in France and I am temporarily unable to use my passport to travel, if there is a family emergency at home in the UK, I could be stuck.

Ah well, more sunbeds for the Germans to hog then

Article 7

At the end of the transition period, the United Kingdom shall cease to be entitled to access any
network, any information system, and any database established on the basis of Union law. The
United Kingdom shall take appropriate measures to ensure that it does not access a network,
information system, or database which it is no longer entitled to access.

well, there goes our access to any sort of satellite navigation anyway..... so even if planes can take off and land, they won't be able to fly anywhere.....

still, not likely to be a problem, is it, what with not having the correct international agreements in place to be allowed to take off or land anyway......

The reason I posted about passports was if there is no deal, that means the UK has no arrangements with the EU/Schengen zone as to whether we need visas etc. So, can I enter eg France on 30th March because I no longer have an EU passport or a passport from a country with an arrangement with the EU.

I would imagine that all countries have arrangements with the EU for their nationals to enter the EV/Schlengen. Those will vary and you may need a visa or you may not. If the UK has no such arrangement, nobody will know what to do with UK passport holders. My instinct is that they'd just treat us as EU nationals until told not to/do something different, as it is easier to keep the status quo, but that's not necessarily the case.

fanfan18 - Shockingly I skimmed the EU-Remain biased website that was posted. That's the same as me trying to make a political point and posting a Daily Mail link. No thanks.

That website belongs to Richard North, who is certainly not a Remainer. He even stood for election as a UKIP candidate.

Does any of the "itllallbealrightist" on here actually think that the UK has recently developed and launched our own sat nav satellites? or that we will be able to do so before March 28th?

I'm in the Eu so would like the government to explain how I can stay here without a valid passport.

You and me both!

So if I am in France and I am temporarily unable to use my passport to travel, if there is a family emergency at home in the UK, I could be stuck.

I've already warned my folks in the UK that I won't be coming back to the UK after Brexit. Unless compelled to by the French government, of course. :(

Agustarella

But I assume that if your mother died suddenly you would want to be able to at least travel to the UK at short notice to attend her funeral?

I have no plans to return to live in the UK either, but an inability to travel - even for a couple of weeks - could be a huge problem for me.

Motheroffourdragons

The links in it go straight to the EU legislation on the Europa website though.

I skimmed the EU-Remain biased website that was posted.

You might have clicked on it but you didn't read it. The blogger in question is a long-time brexiter (from before Brexit was even a thing) and was involved in UKIP in its pre-neofascist days.

I read his blog intermittently. I hope he is wrong as he is far more catastrophist than most remainers.

He had a plan for Brexit, btw, one that might even have worked.

The problem is that negotiations can’t start on a lot of things until we have a Brexit deal, whatever that looks like. I just don’t see how there is enough time left; it was a big ask in terms of time scale even if things had moved at a rapid pace all along. Anything at this point will be cobbled together and poorly thought out because there is literally no time left.

This statement here really sums up my impression looking in from the outside.

*I didn't vote, I don't live in the UK, and most of this doesn't affect me. I'm not a leaver or a remainer. I don't have a pony in this race.)

Comparing it to the Y2K issue - the Y2K issue was known about and defined early enough that planning and action could take place in plenty of time. I had friends working on it and I recall the enormous effort involved, and how many years of work it took. You don't have that much time between now and Brexit.

Hi there everyone,

We're going to move this over to Brexit shortly.

More pathetic anti-Brexit scaremongering bullshit.

The Y2K thing was also dealt with globally, by people who knew what they were doing. Whereas Brexit is being negotiated by the most inept and divided government in living memory.

But I assume that if your mother died suddenly you would want to be able to at least travel to the UK at short notice to attend her funeral?

My dad, who was one of those annoying never ill people, was diagnosed with advanced liver disease at the end of last year and has been in and out of hospital ever since, so I've obviously thought about this. The thing is, once I give up my rented digs in the UK I have nowhere to live, no income in the UK, and if denied re-entry into France (where I will be living within the next couple of months) me and the kids would be on the streets. I won't risk that, so regardless of the emergency in the UK, I won't be coming back. It's not the same as being there, but I'm hoping Skype will still work.

Stupomax

This is my concern as well.

I know quite a lot about the EU including the theory of the withdrawal process. I have long said that two years was not enough time to negotiate a proper withdrawal agreement.

My feeling is that if the government had decided on a workable strategy before triggering Article 50, we would be a lot further along the road than we are now. If they had not wasted four months holding a pointless general election after triggering Article 50, we would be in a better position. And if they had negotiated sensibly with the EU in a mature manner, instead of saying "go whistle", the rest of the EU might well at this stage be willing to agree to an extension. (The "transition period" is sort of an extension anyway.) No one sensible on the EU side wants to see us crash out without a deal. It affects them and their citizens too.

But unfortunately we're now less than 8 months from Brexit and it doesn't seem as though we're any closer to a deal than we were two years ago.

The border in Ireland is an absolutely huge issue which almost no one gave any real thought to before the referendum. Even now, if everything else was going swimmingly, I don't know how we would resolve that.

But at the moment it looks like we're in very real danger of leaving without any deal at all, and there are some mental people in the Tory party who actively want that, even though they must know how much damage it will cause.

If people are coming across as hysterical and talking about disaster and prepping now, it's because there is "Brexit" and there is "falling-off-the-cliff-edge-with-no-deal-Brexit". The former didn't necessarily have to be a complete disaster, but the latter most certainly would/will be.

A lot of these agreements and frameworks that we take for granted will just stop applying to the UK overnight, and the fallout will be terrible. That is a fact. People warning about this now aren't just scaremongering in the hope that if people get frightened enough we'll end up remaining. The people who are warning about this are like people standing on the deck of the Titanic going, 'Guys! Guys! There's a massive fucking iceberg right ahead of us!!!"

A big part of the reason we aren't prepared for any of these things and people are panicking now is because two years ago, most people assumed a reasonable deal would be done.

More pathetic anti-Brexit scaremongering bullshit.

Thanks, I'm really close to filling my 'Brexit thread Bingo card' at this point.