British musicians urged to lobby the EU to get visa free travel

British pop stars should lobby the EU and European governments to ease rules allowing musicians and performers to tour the bloc without needing visas, Brexit minister David Frost said on Tuesday.

Speaking at a hearing of the UK parliament’s Culture committee, Frost told lawmakers that Elton John and other musicians should “use their relationships” across Europe “to encourage those governments to be less restrictive.”

Elton John has lobbied Boris Johnson’s government to take the issue up, warning that otherwise the UK is “in grave danger of losing a generation of talent due to the gaping holes in the government’s trade deal.”

Visa free travel for actors and musicians is not included in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and UK which came into force in January, with the matter left in the hands of individual governments.

Seventeen EU countries have allowed visa-free touring, lowering the cost and bureaucratic requirements of touring.

The Let the Music Move campaign group, which includes the British band Radiohead and hundreds of musicians, accused the government of a “disturbing lack of urgency to address a range of Brexit-related bureaucracy and costs that will make EU touring almost prohibitively expensive and burdensome.”

(Benjamin Fox | EURACTIV.com)