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'm not familiar with this, haven't travelled fur a few months. Is it for eu citizens too?

No. The thread is about the new EES system for non-EU citizens entering the Schengen area. EU citizens (including citizens of non-Schengen EU countries such as Ireland and Cyprus) do not need to go through this process.

Stressful - no

Re: eTA, EU members have had to pay to get into the UK since April last year, so that's only fair.

Of course, EU citizens need an electronic travel authorisation (ETA), rather than a visa, to enter the UK for tourism, visiting family or certain other reasons for up to 6 months. It costs £16.

Apart from Irish passport holders, due to the Common Travel Area.

I was in the Netherlands in October and Poland in November and didn’t have any problems.

I imagine the big tourist airports in Majorca and places like that are a palaver - but then they always have been.

They will start to enforce the rules next month so it's supposed to all change then

I traveled by Eurostar to France in December. No change at all.

Flew to Spain in November. Took about ten mins to fill in the form on the machine at Madrid, then through security no problem. Dd had to scan her fingerprints; I wasn’t asked to.

I really wouldn’t let that put you off going on holiday.

😂😂😂

oh dear, things have changed.

Travelled to Amsterdam in October, Portugal in November and Iceland in December. All were fine and not remotely as bad as travelling to the US. Going to Mexico in February, no idea what to expect with that but we shall see.

The Eurostar axed their trains to Disneyland Paris about 2 or 3 years ago due to the extra time post-Brexit passport checks were taking. I can't remember the exact figures but I read about it somewhere that it takes something like an extra 20 or 30 seconds to check a passport because they have to do a more in depth check rather than a cursory glance. Multiply those extra seconds by several hundred passengers that all turn up any once and it is a lot of time.

Similarly, last time I took the Eurostar and arrived back in London, I was right at the very back of the train and had to queue up for nearly an hour to get through passport control. When I got to the front, I asked them why there were no machines and they said there was no space and the station was designed and built with the assumption that we would be on the EU and would only be doing quick passport checks.

3 minutes is quite a lot when you add it on to every person.

Even 30 seconds per person is going to add a lot of time to a queue.

Good luck to those travelling in the peak summer.

Thanks Brexiteers!

Just returned from Rome and had no issues. I was surprised at how speedy it all was.

And from later in the year, UK citizens will need one for the Schengen area (which of course doesn't include Ireland - or Cyprus).

Hmm 3 minutes per say 100 people on a plane is a LONG wait and that's just one plane (and most will have more than 100 people on board although a lot of course will be EU passport holders)! I know they have more than one terminal for people to use, but still.

I'm with you OP it is very off-putting.

It's also their excuse for not restarting trains from Ashford, Ebbsfleet or Stratford.

However, I think their CEO is/was anti-Brexit (fair enough) and had a no-can-do attitude. Less fair enough.

Tbf should have said - we’re a family of 5 and it was 3 mins for our party.

But yes. Thanks Brexiteers.

But there is not just one machine - the last EU airport I flew into had about 25 machines, so even with 100 passengers needing to go through, the queue for each machine was effectively only 4 passengers long.

Well you could be right of course that Eurostar used this as a convenient excuse but it is true that the time required to check each passport is longer.

That's right, it was a long time ago, back in the days of Doncaster airport. Those were the days, no queues anywhere!

Lol this is so true. My partners passport never works at Heathrow but they insist he joins the egates queue, then has to queue again for manual gate when it doesn't work. EVERY BLOODY TIME

That is both helpful and annoying to know 😂 thank you

Ooh, let me get my teeny tiniest violin!

This is what I love about the middle class Remoaner , quite happy to hand over national sovereignty to an unelected technocracy just so they don't get held up at the airport on their hols. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🥲

Just got back. Eye scanner and fingerprints took about an extra 60seconds max per person.