Has anybody from the UK got any experience of driving kit to Europe (Germany in this case) for a recording session?

I'm aware I probably need to do a carnet for the equipment but I'm hoping somebody here has done this and could give me a few pointers.


TIA, Dave

We had a job in Sweden in April. I needed a carnet to cover taking six microphones, some clips, a pair of headphones, a talkback/monitoring box and an interface. It cost GBP607 and I used a company called Dynamic Dox based near Heathrow airport.

The UK Customs people at Heathrow were helpful but it was a slow procedure both going and coming back. My guess is that if you are traveling by road you will have to allow extra time at your port of exit and at your port of arrival - in both directions. If you are in a car you might get away with going straight to the port. If you are in a van you might end up in a queue on the M20.

You do not need forms for going in and out of each member EU country - just one entry into, say, France - and one exit out of, say, France.

That's a breath-taking amount of money just to travel abroad with a few mics Tony!

At the time of writing this post:

£607 = €710 = $744

A couple of quick Qs...

1. Do you have to use a 'facilitating' company like Dynamic Dox or can you not get the appropriate carnet papers directly from the UK Government more cheaply?

2. Would the amount you paid be even more if you'd had more gear? Is it weight or value dependent?

Thanks.

You don't have to go through a facilitating company. You can apply direct to the London Chamber of Commerce - check their website.

The amount paid comprised a fixed fee for the process, a handling fee from the facilitating company, plus a variable fee according to the nature and value of the goods to cover the guarantee. The guarantee cost will also vary depending upon the length of time the equipment will be in the EU.

If you are traveling in a commercial vehicle there are also EU regulations called cabotage defining travel arrangements.

Wow!
I don't think that many of the Britons who voted for Brexit were travelers or business people.

I did a lot of carnet travel on the Continent
Carnets are meant to prevent illegal sales of items in the countries visited.
Its essential to list all SNs with their values and weights.
Carnets must be signed in and out of all counties visited, otherwise you will pay a penalty later.
This can be time consuming and frustrating, however in theory the EU is one entity so should be easier.
Freight companies will service this for you, at a cost or you can go to your local Chamber of Commerce
Its important to carry duplicate lists of kit for transit purposes.
All this is easier now as English is much more common at border posts and airports.
It was tedious sometimes but now forms can be submitted electronically and in advance so should be easier.
But knowing the EU it won't.
Marks and Spencer needs 770 pages of forms (some in Latin) in order to send 1 truck to Northern Ireland.....
Such is the lunacy of Euro red tape to support the internal market being sullied by British goods sent to a British Province that happens to border the EU.

How easy is it for you to take gear into the States Jim?
US customs could be very tricky after 9/11
I was travelling with a UK Brigadier who had just come back from Pakistan he was detained for ages
He was running the Territorial Army at that time..
Can Canadian bands truck their kit into the US easily?
Once US bands used to come to the UK and pick up sound and lighting trucks and tour the EU
Now they go in through Dublin or Hamburg /Rotterdam

For smaller quantities of gear you can get by without a carnet, at least between Canada and the US. I live in Canada and have an annual live sound gig in the US, so I've crossed the border with all my live sound equipment (console, speakers, mics, snake, cables, stands) many times.

The first time through I filled out a small Canada Customs form Y38 (now called BSF-407), Identification of Articles for Temporary Exportation, accompanied by a printed list of all the items and their serial numbers. A few of my items have no serial numbers (cables, stands, etc.), which the agent complained about before he stamped my form, but I've crossed back and forth with the equipment at least a dozen times since then with no issue.

Occasionally the agents at the border ask for the documentation and they've always been satisfied with that little wallet-size form (which has no expiration date, unlike a carnet that expires after a year) and my printed inventory.

I used the same approach some years ago when I flew to Nashville with a small field recording rig for a project there; the customs agents checked my form going and returning and there were no issues.

I've never worked in the USA Roger. It seems that the major hurdle is more about work permits than carnet. Canadian bands going south to play usually get help with their paperwork from the musicians' union which is the same body in both countries. I have never had issues bringing gear to my daughter who lives in NYC area. American Border Services don't seem to care about importation in less than commercial quantities ('cause everything is cheaper and better in the USA son! ???). But if you are bringing your own gear back to Canada, you had better have got a list of SNs notarized at the Canadian border before entering the USA if you don't want to pay the tax all over again

Lots of good info.

I think the main take-away here is that up until recently none of these admin headaches and expenses were necessary for Brits moving & working within the EU, but now they are.

The EU is a cartel obsessed by its single market
The US seems more relaxed with its neighbours and friends.
Brussels loves red tape.

I don'r want to have this steered into a political conversation about Brexit - it certainly seems to divide opinions!

It is fairly disheartening for me to see the info provided by TonyF (thanks a lot for your input by the way); it's a big extra fee for what are modest budgets for this type of recording (Fanny Hensel/Mendelssohn solo music, at the Mendelssohn house in Leipzig) but it shouldn't be too prohibitive.

Anybody else got any experiences of running carnets to the EU? Or other companies that you may have actually used to deal with the paperwork etc...


Thanks, David

lol - there's no denying that brexit has been a mess, not exclusively but specifically for musicians...

anyway, living in switzerland, i have been using carnets for almost as long as i can remember: technically speaking, it's dead simple and straight forward, as well as proceedings at the customs.

a carnet is nothing but a list of items (showing their value, age, where it was manufactured etc.) which get exported/imported to/from one or more countries. this list needs to get stamped at every border crossing; mostly, custom controls are not much interested in actually seeing the gear; there can be random examination though and if anything is missing or seems suspicious, your schedule is in danger, proceedings slow down, legal action looms and penalties are damn high!

again, all of this steems from my experience dealing with swiss customs and those of neighbouring states; i have no idea whether proceedings got equally well been implemented with gear coming (and going back to) the uk though...

Yea, I agree that in principle it is literally just a list of stuff that, if they do check, needs to be accurate so they can ensure that all good that enter, leave as well. Fair enough I think! I won't blame the EU for that at all.

However, it seems in reality that (here at least in the UK) the process is either such a distant memory to the majority that even those who did it back before freedom of movement need to use a 3rd party to get the paperwork in order.


David

In third-world countries we often had case-by-case inspections, not because they really thought we were going to sell our gear in their country, but because the inspectors were bored and curious about what we were doing there. So customs inspections often devolved into show-and-tell sessions, with the inspectors taking turns looking through the camera, listening to the mics on headphones etc.. We learned not to rush this process and act friendly and usually they'd eventually get distracted, stamp our forms without looking further and shoo us away.

can't be that bad (as long as you don't intend driving a truck and/or travel to several countries) - get in touch with chamber of commerce or the custom office through which you intend to proceed; even in post-brexit-uk, someone should know... -)

It's not that anyone in the EU voted for the Brits to leave the Union, on the contrary: it has been widely perceived as a one sided divorce, but when you willingly leave anyway, burning all your treaties, you should not complain about suddenly finding yourself in a differently organised world. The UK chose to have red tape around its island and that is what they got.

770 pages to import one truck from mainland UK to NI
A British province.
There is no such requirement for EU trucks into the UK
It’s ridiculous.

1. How many different items were in that particular truck from your anecdotal example?
2. The customs border between GB and the EU is located between the British island and the Irish island, as agreed upon by both parties in the divorce papers (for reasons of peace-keeping in NI as promised by the UK government many years before Brexit took place), so this is the logical result. Should have thought of that before voting to leave.
3. A truck full of many different goods going in from the EU to the UK may need just as many paperwork as the other way around. Don't parrot the propaganda.

I don't know the current state of passports for human travel....it seems there's a trend to include biometric data encoded on a chip that's embedded in the centre pages, as well as the usual photograph and pages for stamping. Matching this with facial recognition scanning should speed up processing...how's that's working out in practice internationally ? But that's applicable to an individual, typically...not a flightcase of recording gear.

While it would be desirable to have some kind of barcode or similar identifier standard for recording gear, getting this accepted worldwide will be an uphill battle...so it's going to be down to receipts, serial numbers, weights and perhaps photographs, as ever. One could hope for an eventual international standard...but we're talking about multiple bureaucracies involved here !

There are probably more standards and templates for carnets worldwide than there are sizes and shapes of USB connectors ! The devil in-carnet...

The EU now has a border with Canada in a tiny island in the Artic North claimed by Greenland and Canada.
The island has been split in 2 formal provinces.
Cant wait to see how this works out.

The most expensive part of recording on Hans Island will be getting there, not the carnet...bring a good windjammer or blimp too!

Interestingly, Greenland is not a member of the EU. They already left the predecessor of the EU in 1985. Time to update your world view.

It’s autonomous Danish territory
Denmark provides 2/3 of its budget
I watch Borgen….
It was a joke.
Canada took 12 yrs to come to a trade deal with the EU

This is quite topical now, it's 6 years today since the U.K. left the E.U.

What's wrong with you guys? Why the "alternative facts"? The UK left the EU January 31st, 2020. That is 2,5 years ago. It was 6 years ago that there was an advisory referendum, where 51,9% of the UK voters crossed the "leave" box. An advice is not the same as the act of leaving, as we have seen in the years of utter confusion since then.

I wondered who would comment on that!

After the vote was cast, the UK had left the EU. As Richard Dimbleby the TV commentator said on the night the result was announced, 'We're out'. The advice of the 'advisory' referendum was accepted, Cameron resigned and it was implemented by the government. Some of those who wanted to remain made an issue of it, but the vote had been cast and they didn't gain traction. The remainder of the time you mention was the tidying up and the crossing of the t's and dotting of the i's, but the UK had made the decision to leave at that point, which is why I quoted the 6 years. And in addition, it's been part of the news here today (well, yesterday now).

It's worth mentioning that the electorate were not given a chance to vote on whether they wished to join the EEC in 1973, the country was taken in by Edward Heath. When the country had already joined, the electorate were then given a vote as to whether or not they wished to remain, and the vote went for remaining. But then the EEC morphed from just being a trading union into a trading/political union, which was not what the electorate signed up for. The signing of the Maasricht treaty, effectively creating the EU, was done again without consent of the electorate, and subsequently a promise, made by Labour, that the electorate would be given a referendum vote was not honoured by Brown on the signing of the Lisbon treaty. When eventually the country was given the EU referendum vote, it voted to leave.
But it's history now, and life's too short.........and we should not perpetuate political discussion on here, it leads to nothing that is constructive.

Far better we have heated discussions about coincident stereo pairs versus spaced omnis.

I made a recording in New York, Hoboken to be precise, and took ten or a dozen microphones in as hand luggage. They were checked for drugs with a wipe, and created more interest than difficulties. The lady with the drug wipe was more interested in seeing "real" microphones up close. I had to check they were handled with care, explaining that some of the pencil mics would roll if care was not taken.

For the record, Hoboken is in New Jersey, not New York.

In any case, it's great to hear you were able to bring in your mics without any delays or consequences.