Musicians urge fans to sign petition to allow visa-free touring in EU after Brexit

The likes of Tim Burgess, Graham Coxon, Spector, Declan McKenna, Nadine Shah, GRACEY, Shame, Frightened Rabbit, Sleaford Mods and more have backed a new petition calling on the government to provide visa-free travel for musicians touring the EU once the Brexit transition period is over.

The UK will officially leave the European Union on 1 January 2021, and on Christmas Eve (24 December) the UK and EU finally agreed a new Brexit trade deal.

Without a free cultural work permit to tour the EU, musicians, music touring professionals, artists, TV and sports celebrities will have to potentially apply for working visas in individual EU countries, making the whole process much more costly and time-consuming. The petition creator Tim Brennan wrote, "The UK has a huge music / event touring industry which has suffered immensely due to Covid. After the end of the transition period, we face further hardship when trying to tour the EU on a professional basis, with potentially each country asking for its own visa, that would be valid only for one trip, As a freelancer I and many like me travel through the EU countless times a year on different tours and events, this will become impossible due to cost and time if we do not have visa-free travel."

with big question marks raised by the brexit deal, help us demand some security for the future of touring bands!https://t.co/OklRkXcbui

— Declan McKenna (@DeclanMcKenna) December 27, 2020

Do consider signing this to help convince the govt that live music in Europe is at least as worthy of debate as the future of our dwindling fish supply https://t.co/T6dfY9OrTW

— Spector (@Spector) December 28, 2020

So many MPs namedrop bands and artists in order for them to seem relevant/ cool. We now need them to help us.

The UK music industry contributed £5.8bn to our economy in 2019.
- for that to continue, we need to be able to tour Europe.

Please signhttps://t.co/0Kj0fSmEH2

— Tim Burgess (@Tim_Burgess) December 27, 2020

Please sign. Visas would be catastrophic for small touring bands from the UK. Petition: Seek Europe-wide Visa-free work permit for Touring professionals and Artists https://t.co/GPnspYSkgO

— Frightened Rabbit (@FRabbits) December 28, 2020