The Institute of Travel Management (ITM) has said travel
managers must act now to assess the potential impact of EU travel regulations
such as the Posted Worker Directive and A1 certification on their business
travellers, or face significant challenges when travel volumes return.
The warning comes in a new publication from the organisation’s
EU taskforce called ‘Preparing for a Return of Business Travel to the EU’.
The publication includes guidance for short-term trips that
trigger a Posted Worker Directive requirement, how to complete A1 certificates
for ad-hoc EU trips and monitoring a traveller’s time in a host country to
avoid new limits that have come into force since Brexit.
Given the complexity involved, ITM is urging buyers not to
attempt tackling these issues on their own. Instead, the taskforce recommends
buyers collaborate with HR, tax, legal and mobility teams across their
business, as well as engage with third party specialists, to build effective
processes within travel programmes.
“With the post pandemic opening of business travel in the
EU, many of the corporate compliance challenges that were put on hold over the
last two years are likely to emerge,” said Scott Davies, CEO ITM.
“These issues are also relevant to HR, tax, mobility and
legal departments, but may not be on their radar yet because short-term
business travel was previously relatively simple to organise and they didn’t
need to be involved. There is a limited window for travel managers to get to
grips with these challenges, socialise them with the appropriate stakeholders
within their organisations and decide on what action needs to be taken.”
The ITM taskforce consists of nine key stakeholders
including Newland Chase, Deloitte and buyer members.