What is the Common Travel Area?

The Common Travel Area (CTA) is an agreement between the UK and Ireland (including the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands) that allows citizens from either country to travel freely between both without the need for passport checks, as well as offering certain voting and welfare rights. While both countries were members of the EU the right to travel freely was also guaranteed by EU free movement rights. The CTA pre-dates either country’s membership of the EU by decades and means that citizens from both countries retain their rights deriving from this agreement with the UK outside the EU.