Cheap phone calls for British holidaymakers were blocked by the EU in Brexit reset talks.
Southern European states, including Spain and Italy, derailed a bid by Sir Keir Starmer to drop roaming charges for UK tourists.
The EU, pushed by countries that attract millions of British tourists, refused to allow the UK back into a scheme that lets travellers use mobile data at local rates when abroad.
The rejection was a blow to Government negotiators hoping to reduce friction for holidaymakers.
When the EU first decided to scrap roaming charges in 2016, the government estimated it would save UK travellers £1.4 billion a year. Following Britain’s exit from the EU, most British providers now charge extra for bundles so that their customers can use mobile internet overseas.
But, but, what in buggery does that have to do with the European Union? With Britain’s relationship with 450 million people? With giving them all the fish? What is this to do with government at all?
Everything within the state.
This is the same mentality that fines Big Tech for doing what it tells you it is going to do.
This why the EU is essentially Fascist in that it suborns private enterprise into acting for the state.
The same article spells out the reality that much-vaunted use of e-gates by UK holidaymakers is only at the discretion of individual states (it’s funny how the eu has no coercive power over its members when it suits them).
However their extended access to UK fishing grounds is very real indeed and will be vigorously enforced.
The EU surrender could backfire on TTK. The more people have to think about the EU the less they like it, apart from deranged remoaners of course.
TTK must be the worst negotiator ever. He’s certainly the worst PM we’ve ever had, and that’s a heck of a list to top.
There are about a dozen mobile phone firms that offer free roaming, presumably because they believe it gives them a market advantage. If you want to “roam like you are at home” you can simply choose one of them as your provider. There is no need for the state to intervene.
In fact it was this very issue that prompted me to vote “leave”. I kept an open mind during the run up to the vote and waited for the compelling arguments to arrive in the Government leaflet that came through my letter box. No pages mentioned the benefits of leaving. None gave any compelling arguments to remain. Instead they all stressed “hypothetical” bad things about leaving. One of the 30 odd pages covered roaming charges. This was the clincher for me. If the state believed this was a “key” reason to vote remain, they were hideously deluded.
It’s weird how treating foreigners as 2nd Class is sometimes Progressive.
Regardless, for holiday makers less time queuing at passport control just means a longer wait at the baggage carousel.
No sacrifice is too big for TTK in his quest to become head of the EU Commission. He knows he is finished as far as voters are concerned hence his headlong rush to the voter free politician’s nirvana of the EU. The UK is doomed.
Read this, this morning.
https://euroweeklynews.com/2025/05/20/eu-plans-police-access-in-phones-and-cars-report-reveals/?utm_source=auto-newsletter-1253&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=AutoNewsAlert
WTF?
Bit risky, putting buggery and TTK in the same sentence…
Andyf,
“This was the clincher for me. If the state believed this was a “key” reason to vote remain, they were hideously deluded.”
Roaming charges was pure “bread and circuses” and a lot of people fell for it. It’s a thing you notice because it’s right in front of you, like the price of fuel or a pint. And people think “great 1p off per pint” rather than thinking “wait, I only drink 10 pints a week, 500 pints per year, so that’s only £5”.
“Following Britain’s exit from the EU, most British providers now charge extra for bundles so that their customers can use mobile internet overseas.”
Yes, and they make other packages cheaper.
EU roaming forced phone companies to charge people more who didn’t go abroad to subsidise the ones that do. The EU didn’t make us net richer by imposing it. Phone companies cross-charge each other for roaming, which works out fine for many countries, but the UK goes on holiday abroad a lot more than the French and Spanish come here. So there’s a charge for the offset. Not actually a huge amount, but it’s there. Before “free” roaming, you paid for this if you wanted it.
This is also pointed out about here about other countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulations#Consequences.
“As mobile operators still have to pay for wholesale charges when subscribers are roaming on other EEA networks, some operators have increased their subscription prices. In Norway, prices increased by 66% when RLAH was introduced.[25] The same argument was being used by Danish operators. In Denmark several operators increased monthly subscription prices by 10–20 DKK.[26]”
Which makes me think this story is complete bollocks. Italy and Spain have no reason to oppose us going back to “free” roaming.
TTK must be the worst negotiator ever.
With respect I give you the fish-faced cow who agreed to a £40bn (or nearly two black holes as Rachel from accounts would put it*) divorce payment simply for leaving the eu before even starting negotiations.
* or just over two bungs to Madagascar for the privilege of continuing to use an atoll which they had never owned in the first place. That’s gone awfully quiet hasn’t it?
John,
You’re probably correct, but recency bias makes me hate TTK more.
Don’t forget the one-eyed Scotch fuckwit, who preannounced that he was going to sell off the gold reserves and buy euros
I’m not technically aware, still having trouble understanding electricity, but Shirley using whatsapp, which most phones have and which, I believe, works through the internet, avoids roaming charges?I
When last abroad, I kept in touch with friends and family using whatsapp, linking in to the hotel’s wi fi, and my phone bill was no higher than it normally was. Would appreciate enlightenment before my next trip abroad.
Penseivat
Travel to the US used to be a problem as no roaming add-ons are available on UK contracts. I get over it by buying a cheap (around £10) e-sim from Saily to piggyback on any US network for 30 days. Perfectly safe as long as you have a VPN. It works for data and WhatsApp although it doesn’t cover texts and conventional calls. Similar deals are available for visiting all eu countries.
In other words the problem no longer exists or is so minimal it’s barely worth talking about.
https://saily.com/
See also: Airalo
I use an e-SIM to travel to the ‘Occupied Areas’ of Cyprus where conventional Cypriot signals are blocked.
What others have said. When I was in Japan I just used LINE connecting to whatever free public WiFi I happened to be in range of.
It speaks to Council tax is not in CPI….. the vacuity of the laptop classes that they would sell out parliamentary sovereignty over 30 minutes in an airport queue with other foreign riff-raff and and possibly having to pay roaming charges.
The point about roaming charges has been well explained. I’ve been with O2 (Telefonica) since they were Cellnet (BT), and I have a cheap monthly contract, but it still gives free roaming in the EU – and the US and other major countries, too I think (I haven’t needed to use it recently). So does the missus’s PAYG with EE.
The EU is too gay to live:
EU adopts new Russia sanctions amid Ukraine ceasefire push
Wesley Rahn with AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters
Published 05/20/2025Published May 20, 2025last updated 22 hours agolast updated 22 hours ago
New EU sanctions target Russia’s “shadow fleet,” as the bloc’s foreign policy chief has called for more US pressure on Russia if Moscow doesn’t agree on a ceasefire.
At this point, I don’t think even PJF thinks sanctions are going to work against Russia, but they are very successfully deindustrialising Germany. This is a Kaiserschlacht against what remains of their chemicals and car businesses.
NB that the American government has already signalled the opposite: it’s looking to remove the sanctions as part of a settlement to end the war. This makes the EU’s moves both irrelevant and untenable, but it’s like the Paris Agreement: even though all the important players have either pulled out or were never going to reduce their CO2, the EU insists the EU economy must be crushed by Net Zero.
Why?
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has called for “consequences” from Washington if Moscow “doesn’t agree on an unconditional ceasefire.”
Kaja Kallas is a female Estonian politician from the Soros slime tank. Why is this silly cow in charge of foreign policy? Estonia isn’t even a real country, we should give it to Russia, Prussia or Lithuania.
“Estonia isn’t even a real country, we should give it to” the Teutonic Knights
Do they say “Ni!”
Steve,
The only thing that would hurt Putin is buying less gas and oil. German exports go via UAE or Turkey and then onwards to Russia. It’s nothing but theatre. Car parts manufacturers can just be all “oh no, we exported it to Ankara with strict instructions not to import on to Russia, no siree”.
The whole green movement is, I suspect, funded by Russia. It’s what I would do in Putin’s shoes. Fill the airwaves with pro-unreliables propaganda and the dangers of nukes and get idiot voters to want to shut down nuclear power which is a threat to Russian gas exports. How much do you have to spend to keep a few idiot hippies doing their thing? Not a lot.
@WB
It would be no surprise to find Russia was funding the Greens, just as the USSR funded the miners strike(s). But there’s no real need for them to do so, as there are plenty of useful idiot billionaires who will do it for them.
@WB
Brezhnev’s strategies didn’t just include CND, Scargill and Lawrence Daley (I have never seen evidence that Joe Gormley was a Communist or Soviet agent): he also infiltrated the IRA and turned it from a Quixotic group targeting the Aldershot barracks into a vicious one intent on massacring civilians both in Northern Ireland and mainland GB. This latter was more effective at weakening the UK’s ability to block and/or deter his murderous schemes in continental Europe and elsewhere. The economic loss from the security imposed to reduce the direct damage from IRA viciousness was far greater than due to the damage itself. The Soviet-run “Official IRA”, after the Provos split off, offended by its atheism spawned criminal gangs both in Belfast and Dublin; after the “Official IRA” declined Russia infiltrated the “Provos” with similar results except for the split because it had learnt to conceal its atheism from devout Catholics.
Various enemies of western freedom fill all sorts of fringe groups with money and wacky ideas to cause internal destabilization. Zero-sum thinkers are particularly prone to this kind of interference.
Where do you think the trans stuff comes from? What about mass migrationism? The latter in particular has done vastly more damage, damage that can only be reversed at a cost we would find obnoxious, than any domestic separatist terrorist group could do.
China? Russia? My money is on both of them and then some. For both the funding and the idea planting.