The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) held the first 2021 European Town Hall focusing on Brexit and the impact on business travel.

After more than four years of intensive negotiation, Brexit finally happened in a dramatic last-minute deal over the Christmas period. Coined the “Christmas Eve deal,” the eleventh-hour deal between the UK and the EU left businesses scrambling to prepare for the 31 December transition.

Experts from GBTA’s lobbying firm Grayling, Clare Moody, Grayling Political Director, former MEP and advisor in No 10 Downing Street and Davide Maistro – Manager – Grayling Brussels joined the webinar to outline the relevant aspects of the deal, and the areas for consideration when travelling to or from the UK post Brexit. The webinar was followed by a Q&A where GBTA travel buyers had the opportunity to pose questions relevant to their roles.

“EU was about convergence, Brexit is managing the divergence between two different markets,” said Claire Moody, Political Director, Grayling, adding “this was an unprecedented deal, there is still a lot to be sorted out in detail, including some fine tuning and delivering practical processes. Inevitably there will be more friction now between the EU and UK, although some of the friction seen now is short term adjustment to the new processes.”

“We had our highest registration rate for this webinar, clearly demonstrating the level of interest amongst our members and the need for clarity. The Brexit deal ended the UK freedom of movement, of people, goods and services and changes the relationships and interactions with each of the 27 EU member countries. From a business traveller perspective, it’s clear that longer queues from tighter custom controls, visa requirements, restrictions on movement of labour and health insurance, are some of the factors we now need to think about. Agreement still needs to be reached on important areas such as transfer of data; financial services and emission trading standards, as well as air services agreement and computer reservations systems, so we still don’t have a complete picture of the impact on business travel,“ said Catherine Logan, Regional VP, EMEA.

The full recording of the GBTA Europe Town Hall including the Brexit discussion is available here or at gbta.org.