Brexit, Covid-19 and the season starts !

Well there has never been a year like this and we certainly hope that we do not see another again ..ever!

But where are we right now in terms of getting jobs / starting seasons and spending a winter in the Alps?

Lets tackle Brexit first as it’s been around longer and unfortunately this is something that has been brought on by ourselves (probably not actually us, but you know what I mean).

In terms of employment, the pretty much accepted way to employ UK staff was to second them from a UK company to work on a short term contract in the EU. With Brexit looming in just a couple of weeks things are changing and from 1st January 2021 UK companies cannot send staff to work in the EU like they used to. The caveat for this is that if an employee is already on contract and in situ by 31st December 2020 then that member of staff will be able to continue working as per their contract until its end date.

Now that all sounded like it could be a way to squeeze one more season as per normal before the whole working visa system needed to even be tried, but along came Covid-19 and buggered the whole thing up for the world (and seasonairres looking for work in winter 2020/21).

So of course the dreaded pandemic means that some EU countries are not opening the ski resorts as yet, although some would correctly say that a government cannot “close” a resort as these are communities that live in the resort not a theme park!

With the start of the season delayed this now of course means that the vast amount of resort based business’s are not in a position to open, let alone employ staff ! So unfortunately the whole “contract in place before 31st December ’20” is not likely to be applicable to many people this winter!

So where does this all leave us ?

Well the snow is falling (in fact Courchevel had too much to allow the World Cup Ladies GS to run on day 2 this weekend), we are sitting tight and waiting to see what Boris and the EU can work out with working visas.

But which resorts are open/opening now ?

Well Finland and Sweden are opening up, The Spanish Pyrenees have stated resorts opening but with some curbs on travel. Switzerland has opened up but with cases rising that could change, or pop over to Slovakia / Slovenia as they are opening up too.

Of course the other curveball the EU just threw is that from 1st January 2021 we may not be allowed to travel to any EU country due to the UK being a “Third Country” now and we have too high covid-19 rates!

Time will tell, all we can say is keep the faith ?

 

Please note the above is all my understanding of the current situation, things change and we all need to be ready to adapt so keep an eye on the real news not all the fake stuff.