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.

Wont the passport queues get better though. Its only while they are rolling it out that there are problems.

This is a change from Oct 2025. Before that, there was no requirement to prove where you were staying. I genuinely don't know what happens if you don't have that, as that's the only/first time I've gone into the EU since the change.

We were asked where we were going at Ijmuiden in December but they took my word for it.

They also weren't separating on EU membership or passports. Everyone was funneled through the same few passport points. I can't say we took much longer than the Germans in front of us and we had 2 more people in our car. We would probably have been faster if I hadn't ambitiously started in Dutch.

We flew in and out of Geneva for Christmas week and it was the quickest and easiest it’s ever been. I expected a complete shit show but fortunately they’d paused the ees scanning.

Thanks very much we're flying Feb

I've flown to Turkey, Spain and Denmark and driven France all within the last 6 months and had no issues with passport controls/ checks to enter any of them...

I understand it’s only meant to take longer the first time you are scanned and after that you will be able to move through more quickly without the extra queues for stamping passports. I quite like having the passport stamps and it doesn’t seem to take as long now as when it was first bought in post-Brexit.

But in answer to your question I went to Spain in November, was told that the new biometrics thing was being phased in depending on the airport, but it wasn’t used either on arrival or departure. Will see what happens when we go again next month.

Wasn’t that part of the Covid rules?

YABU. The only place I've travelled to where passport control was a pain was Schipol and locals told me it was shit before Brexit anyway so.. 🤷‍♀️

If this was in August, it’s not what the OP is referring to. Are you referring to the automatic passport gates on return to the UK?

Dumb brexiters have put me off foreign travel forever. They have ruined everything.

I travelled end of November and in December and didn't notice anything different?

When we arrived in Barcelona in December we used the new machines and were through in less than 10 minutes. However my husband and his dad used the machines themselves and answered the questions themselves, a member of staff pressed some random buttons for me so I have no clue what the questions were. None of us were asked for our finger prints. My husband's mum had the same experience as me where a member of staff filled the answers in but she had to provide her finger prints. So now we don't know if we're registered or not. And where we go when we arrive on our next holiday.

I also read Lisbon airport has suspended it completely for 3 months due to how it's been handled and how out of control it was. Lisbon airport was a nightmare at the best of times so can't say I'm surprised. Also heard bad things about Málaga but again it's an awful airport too!

Did you only ever travel within the EU.? Its made not a jot of differemce to my travel

We went to Hamburg in December and aside for a longer queue when we arrived it went fairly smoothly. The question will be what happens when we next travel. We don't need to do the registration part now, so will it be quicker?!

In theory yes, it should be quicker. When you place your passport onto the kiosk machine it should read it and compare your face with the picture already in the EES system. But you'll still be in the same queue as those who have not previously registered so if it takes them a while to register, you'll be delayed. As I understand it there is no separate lane for those who have previously registered on the EES system.

I got myself a British passport, and my kids french passport, to avoid the hassle.

But FYI I had no issue getting an ETA on my french passport, and crossing the border twice. The agent said I had a valid ETA for 2 years.

One of my friends is still travelling inner Spanish passport based in her settled status. Apparently it's still valid at the border, even though she got the British nationality 1.5 years ago.

Oh stopit !

It’s your whole face, not just your eyes.

Have you actually travelled abroad since Brexit?

Some other countries have had finger print & eye scans for a few years eg Thailand

There are always staff on hand if a person has issues with the automated gates.

Similarly, in Europe there are staff to help

it’s recommended that the whole party stays together and goes through the manual gate, if that’s what non British/Irish people are also being told to do. We had a similar situation last year (as non-British residents): I was using my British passport, DH had his Irish one, and DD was using an emergency German passport because she’d forgotten that her normal one had run out. We just queued up to get seen by immigration as a group. We were taking a risk anyway as she’s actually a British citizen but didn’t have a valid British passport (she’s an adult and should be sorting these things out herself). We didn’t know what we’d do if the immigration guy had asked if she was British (or Irish) (we’d fess up obviously, but didn’t then know if she’d be allowed in) but it all went smoothly at the desk. Immigration is really not interested in dealing with minors separately from their British parents.

Actually the worst immigration delay I’ve ever experienced was at Terminal 2 of Heathrow, coming back into the UK. Pre-Brexit! The automatic gates were down for everybody, including British citizens, and it took several hours for everybody to be checked manually. For some reason British and EU people were put in the same queue as everyone else, which was annoying and very unusual. But hey, go ahead and blame ‘Europe’ for any difficulties you experience.

Hmm I haven't travelled abroad for a very long time due to costs but I do like a manned booth; you get a 'welcome home', which somehow, I like.

You clearly haven't travelled abroad for a very long time..!

"Welcome home" at Stansted often involves waiting for an hour or so just to reach the e-gate area, where an officious jobsworth barks at people and tells them to get into the correct queue (which is not always obvious to the thousands of non-British passengers) before people line up in one of those long snake-lines. When you reach the e-gates, only half of them are likely to be open, and of those, many seem to just randomly refuse to process people - who then get barked at by another jobsworth and told to join the manual processing queue.

God some people need to grow up, whinging about having to have a valid passport. Meanwhile in the rest of the world its just called being an adult and making sure you have what you need. Apart from the fact the fact they are just so mean, I think the thing I hate most about the rise of shittojet airlines is the fact that people who haven't evolved enough to be capable are suddenly able to fly. Then moan about a delay or when they have forgotten to renew their kids passports.