To find travel in Europe too stressful now with all the extra passport palaver

[Pavementworrier]

Why do all these new systems work so poorly? Who is getting rich on the stupid shit eye scanner things?

Please tell me soothing tales of recent visits to Europe where it was fine.

I can"t say i found it particularly stressful, going through customs and scanners is what some people voted for so everyone else just need to get on with it, but i don"t think it is a palava, i have had worse experiences trying to get self scan in a shop to work, than going through an airport.

@Pavementworrier Point of information - the machines don't scan your eyes, they take a photograph of your face.

Actually i had to take my glasses off at Palma Airport because i wasn't recognised but that was my error not the machine.

Spain was fine over Christmas although ithe machine didn't recognise my fingerprints (which had been taken for the first time in Belgium in November) - we actually got through much quicker than EU passport holders!

Travelled to Poland in December, the fingerprint system was having problems matching prints, long delay in passport control arriving, on exit they just waved us through when the system was glitching.

@Pavementworrier "Non EU now need to queue up at a machine to get eyes scanned and finger prints and answer various questions before moving on to passport control. Trouble is the machines seem to keep breaking down causing absolute chaos. (I'm not sure if there's variation by country)"

Have you experienced this yourself or are you just repeating the anti-EU rage bait stories from the Daily Mail, GB News etc.? What are you actually getting stressed about?

And yes, various countries are introducing the EES system in phases and at present, not everyone is being scanned. When it has been getting very busy, at some borders only around 10% of travellers are being processed this way. At Dover, car passengers are not at present being processed.

As for ETIAS, which will be introduced by the end of 2026, this is applied for online long before you travel and so should have no impact on the experience at the border, as you won't even be able to board the plane or ship without a ETIAS visa-waiver.

@Coffeeishot "Actually i had to take my glasses off at Palma Airport because i wasn't recognised but that was my error not the machine."

Removing glasses is pretty standard at these machines - even at Stansted, Heathrow and other UK airports.

That's all rather self-inflicted...

Your country decided you don't want to have one shared space with the rest of us, so now you are out of it.

When we travel from EU to UK, we need to buy the travel registration as well.

Yes i know it is standard i was just absent minded.

Well, our experience over new year in Lanzarote was a shit show, so I'd have to agree with you on this OP. It took us AGES to get through the airport both ways, because the scanners weren't working and at the gate there were only three for the entire planeload of passengers, which ended up delaying our departure.

I mean everyone non Schengen is being caught up in the chaos

Also blabla "your country" do you go around blaming ordinary people for other political stuff over which they have no control?

I have a very vivid memory of some poor woman at City Airport trying to explain to her elderly mother what to do!

OP, have you actually used the new system yourself? Or are you just relying on news stories which are always going to present the negative aspect to a system like this? Lots of people who have actually travelled in Europe since the introduction are here telling you that it’s really not a problem.

Flew into Europe two days ago ... seamless, could not have got through immigration any faster. Ignore the nonsense.

Adds nothing to the question. We know the UK left the EU on a democratic decision by the majority. We don't need continual snide remarks about every change as a result of it with a 'told you so'.
And this is about entry into the Schengen area free travel area of which some EU Countries are not part of including Ireland.
My first registration through Lithuania took 6 minutes, if that helps put context on it. There is no evidence that they are permitting huge backlogs if the technology isn't working. They can manually stamp still if they need to. They seem to be very pragmatic about making it work and not creating huge delays.
I returned from Poland and they were the same.

They can phase it in. There is still an entry system for entry by Ferry as per how it has always been. If you do the Newcastle to Netherlands they stamp you through at the moment but it will change.

I travelled in August and was going to say it was fine, but I did have trouble with the eye scanner thing, mainly as it wasn't explained properly by anyone. Once I figured it out (and spotted the sign that said what to do, which I'd missed in my panic at getting it wrong) it was fine. I'm sure most people get it.

I hadn't been abroad since my teens so wasn't expecting anything but someone looking at my passport. I'll know for next time so it will hopefully be easy. Apart from that it was all simple. Everyone else around me got through very quickly. It was just me holding up the queue. 🤦‍♀️

It's currently being phased in and experiences are mixed between not too bad and really long queues of a few hours in extreme cases. I have read that it's being postponed in some Spanish airports because it's taking too long but I don't know what will happen when they have to implement it.

I've done it in another country where, judging by the passport queues, about two thirds of the flight were nationals of that country so the third country queue, which were likely mostly UK passport holders going on holiday was small. It was also a small airport with only one flight arriving when I was there. It took about 20 minutes, despite it looking glitchy getting the finger prints in a few cases.

It's very different at somewhere like Alicante or Malaga that gets half a dozen flights full of UK passport holders all arriving in a short time window, which I think is where the problems have been. I've been through Malaga airport and seen the scanners in place but not operating. I've seen online that if you choose a scanner straight away coming up to passport control, you can self register without joining a queue and then it makes it quicker to get through the automated gate - but to do this you have to overcome your ingrained British 'see a queue and join it' mentality

@Pavementworrier "I mean everyone non Schengen is being caught up in the chaos"

What chaos? When have YOU been impacted by the new process - and if you have yet to be, why are you so stressed about it?

Most counties I've been to have this. It's hardly a big deal

Went to Venice in November and it added about 30 minutes to the journey time, however, I think it will be worse in the summer….

Nothing to do with Brexit. Schengan zone countries introducing this for non schengan countries. The UK never was and didn't have plans to be part of schenagan. Switzerland is not part of the eu but is part of the travel zone.

The aim of course is to speed up entry for people from outside. In particular the 70m trips Brits make to Europe each year which is a massive part of Spain, Portugal and Greece's economy.

I don’t envy the queues for non eu passport holders, it’s ridiculous.

As we weren't in Schengen even when we were an EU member, Brussels may well have decided that British citizens would have to have used the new system anyway. They never missed an opportunity to stick the knife in and twist it before.

Anyway, they have been insisting for years that it's a quick an efficient system which works well in other parts of the world, so what's the problem?

I have a HUGE problem with the eye scanner - I’m very short sighted so when I take my glasses off I can’t see the machine two feet in front of me. It makes it impossible to line my face up.

In the past I either call for help or just spend ages faffing trying to get my head in the right place.

Same problem with passport photo machines too in the past!

Can you explain why you cannot travel on your Finnish PP anymore? Seems odd.