The reality of Project Fact set in this week as the government gears up to roll out a new marketing blitz to prepare people for Brexit.
The “UK’s new start: let’s get going” campaign will be sent out via text messages, TV, radio, online, print, and billboards.
It will advise Britons in the EU and EU citizens living in the UK, as well as UK and EU businesses, on how to prepare for the end of the transition period on 31 December.
But it has left many people in panic over the reality of what Brexit means.
For starters, the so-called ‘nudge and shove’ plan to slowly prepare Britons ahead of the exit warns of higher travel charges with travel insurance premiums expected to rise once eligibility for free healthcare in EU countries ends.
The public will also be urged to check for mobile phone roaming charges in the EU and told that they will need six months of validity on their passport to travel.
Pet owners will be advised to give vets four months’ notice before trying to take an animal to Europe.
Business owners who import and export products will be urged to apply in good time for an EU Economic Operators Registration and Identification (EORI) number, or to register with the relevant customs authority.
British companies trading with Europe will have to absorb a post-Brexit bureaucracy burden and fill in an extra 215 million customs declarations at a cost of about £7 billion a year, a 206-page government document revealed today in the FT shows.
The plans, laid out by Michael Gove, included an admission that “customs declarations are complicated”.
It comes on the back of admissions from the car industry that one in six jobs could be lost due to the double whammy of coronavirus and Brexit.
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