France with no passport

[URaflutteringcunt]

Was there ever a time you could get to France with no passport? By Eurostar.

DP is adamant.

I brought my 15 year old niece to the uk from Belgium on the Eurostar and she just had a standard ID card.

Group passports and travelling on your parents' passport were both things when I was little.

It also wasn't unusual for passports not to be checked either side so I can imagine some parents just winging it!

You could on the failed citizenship/identity card scheme thing they had in the 00s.

We did it in about 2004.

Before Brexit EU citizens could travel to the UK on ID cards. I once brought my toddlers to the UK on expired Italian ID cards and only realised afterwards.

I think a workmate managed to travel on their ID card in the nineties when their passport was forgotten. Officials had more discretion.

Yep, but if your query is related to a current trip you'd like to make, I can tell you with certainty that you currently need a passport to go to France. If the officials don't check it then they're not doing their job. It's highly unlikely they wouldn't check.

I went on a school trip in 1989 and remember going to the post office to get that paper passport.no one had their own because we were all on our parents passports I think.

I travelled to France via Ferry for 2 weeks with a scrap of card from the post office in 1994. I didn't apply for an actual passport until 2003.

I went in 1982 and 1985 with an ID card that was issued by the post office. No idea when that stopped being an option.

Kids used to be able to travel on a family passport so they didn't need their own. Also you could have group ones eg school trips or coach trips. They were technically a kind of passport but single use just for that particular trip

I travelled on my driving licence (paper one not photocard!) on Eurostar in the 1990s. I was with a group and I'd forgotten my passport - things were definitely a bit more lax pre-911! Strictly speaking I think they should have turned me back though.

Some countries have national photo ID cards which will still be accepted instead of passports by French customs.

Obviously for Brits a passport is the only thing that is valid now...

I went in the early 80's with my ex and our children to France on a kind of day pass/ visa. Not sure exactly what it was, but we didn't need a passport for a day trip.

@URaflutteringcunt
You used to go to the post office and buy a passport that lasted a year for £10 it was a folded bit of card with your photo on @Zonder has shown a picture of it further up.

I remember being on my mums passport and it was just my name and my sisters name scribbled on it. The passport was a piece of paper/booklet not a ‘proper one’ at all.
On a completely disorganised school trip we all went on a coach to France and our teachers hadn’t even asked if we had had any passports. The people working at the border weren’t fussed either. They just waved us through and we carried on to France where our teachers left 60 13 years old unsupervised for a week!

Our first DC born in 1995 travelled in my passport as a baby. By the time we had DC2 in 1998 they had to have their own passport even though DC1 was still in mine, until I think age 5.

I was on my parents passport until I was 16 in the mid eighties and did 2 school trips abroad with school on group passports.

Definitely remember people buying one year passports at the post office. From memory, I don't think these had photos, but can't be certain.

I flew back from Barcelona on my photo card driving licence as I'd left my passport at the hotel reception. No problem as we were still in the EU.

Hotel posted the passport back to me.

yes as a European citizen you did not need a passport to cross into another EU state, this was usually moot though as you needed ID for both the border and to board a plane etc. and as the uk doesn't have a national ID card the ID most commonly used was a passport.

I remember having a one year cardboard passport issued at the post office as a child. There were also group passports available for school trips? Long before Eurostar though.

No, but you could get a 1 year passport instantly, stopped in 80's

Was the 1year passport not called a British Visitors Passport?

I was cheaper than the 10 year passport but not 10x as cheap. Maybe a third or half the cost so it made more financial sense to buy a full passport.

I went to France in 1990 on a temporary passport, it was a folding piece of card . I think it was valid for one month- as I recall no one checked it. We just got waved through at the border both ways

but yes years ago kids travelled on the parents passport

I'm pretty sure that at one point in the '90s you could travel between the UK and France as an EU citizen on a photocard Driving License.

I was on a group passport to France in 2000. By the time I next went with a school trip to Europe in 2004 such a thing had been gotten rid of.

Meant to add, it had my photo, full name and DOB on but was applied for by the school. My birth certificate wasn’t involved in the application for it.