0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
Red tape for British travellers will become more tangled once the UK leaves the EUWhy are you travelling, where are you staying, how are you feeling? Those are some of the many questions that British holidaymakers and business travellers are likely to face when they travel abroad after the UK leaves the EU, if the latest proposals from Brussels take effect.At present, British citizens are entitled to travel anywhere in the EU simply by presenting their passport: a French, Spanish or Italian border guard is permitted only to check that the travel document is valid, and yours. Where you plan to go is none of his or her business.But once the UK leaves the EU, British citizens will become “third country nationals” with no automatic right of admission. While the Brexit negotiations continue, a European initiative is being developed to strengthen the EU’s external borders: the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS).What questions must I answer?Personal information including name, address, contact details, passport details and occupation (with your job title and employer, or for students, the name of educational establishment). There will also be questions about your state of health, particularly any infectious diseases. You must give details of any convictions in the past 20 years for serious crimes, including those involving terrorism, armed robbery, child pornography, fraud and money laundering, cybercrime, illicit trafficking in endangered animal species, counterfeiting, industrial espionage, arson, racism and xenophobia.Next, you must say why you are travelling (holiday, business, visiting family, etc), specify the country you will first arrive in and provide the address of your first night’s stay — which will pose a problem for travellers who like to make plans as they go along.
The arrivals areas in European airports which handle a large number of UK holidaymakers... may need to be re-modelled to take account of the shift of a large number of passengers from intra-EU to “third country” status.
The "Other Countries" queue in comparison to "EU Only", has always looked attractively short at Gatwickjust saying... ;-)The suggestion that throughout Europe, all passport checking desks are suddenly equipped with the technology to electronically check all holder's passports against all countries' passport databases seems a little er, imaginativeArriving EFL tomorrow, so will see if the solitary passport checker there has more equipment than the telephone he had in May