The EES - what to do if one family member has EU passport?

[Ozgirl76]

We’re visiting Europe in the next few weeks. My husband has his Irish passport, the rest of us don’t (I never will, the kids’ applications are processing). When it comes to the EES, can we all go through, piggybacking on the Irish passport or will he go through by himself and us in the queue?

I think it depends on the airport. I was waved through into the EU line with Dh and dds who have French passports in Lisbon. I skipped the EES queue and did it at the desk with a border guard, it took about 5 minutes, I had mentally prepared for a long queue and absolute chaos!

Other than Irish passports, of you’re a British passport holder you must use that when going in and out of the UK even if you have another passport. This was brought in recently and there’ve been quite a few news stories of people who’ve ended up stuck.

I've always hitherto used the EU lane with a UK passport whilst travelling with DH and DD (dual EU-UK nationals) without issue. Travelling next month for the first time since the introduction of EES. I had assumed that whilst I would need to use the kiosk first to provide my biometrics, I could then still use the EU queue at passport control as I've always done since brexit.

Coming back from Italy on Friday, only British passport holders, we'd done the fingerprint scans and photos on way out and other hand on way back. The machine told us to go to the automated gates (which were signed as "All Passports") but the staff wouldn't allow us to and made us wait in a 1 hour queue. We did see a few British passport holders going through the automated gates - maybe they were family members in a group with EU passport holders? What was the point of the fingerprints though if not to use the automated gates?

We had a positive experience returning from Spain, an airport official beckoned me to join my DH in the EU queue. But Spain can be rather more laid back than some other countries, IME.

There is an unspoken rule that families should not be separated at borders - I’ve got married friends - travelling without children - who argued this when they were told to go into separate queues who were then able to pass through together.

A UK citizen with an EU spouse is also entitled to additional residence and free movement rights which aren’t necessarily going to be recognised if you pass through separately.

This me and the kids with the Irish passports and we wave good bye to the English Dad😆

Greece have suspended EES until next year. Enjoy OP!