Dual nationality and EES

[Bichette]

I have dual French/English nationality - 2 passports. I know that I can use my French passport to enter the EU and don’t need to do the biometrics palaver BUT I will be travelling to the EU in June with a friend who only has a UK passport. So I am wondering if there is any use in me accompanying her through immigration with my UK passport and doing the EES checks “just in case” so my details are on record or is this not advised as I am supposed to always present my EU passport when entering the EU? I will have to wait for her anyway.

You shouldn’t be doing that, enter on your eu passport

"Just in case" of what, though? About the only reason I can think of is if on a subsequent visit you somehow accidentally lost your French passport in the cafe at the UK departure end and "had to" use the UK one to enter France. But that's the kind of bridge you can cross when you come to it. Whether EES is a sixty-second or a six-hour process, there doesn't seem to be any reason to do it now "in case" you have to do it in future for some unspecified reason.

(In practice what you should do in such cases is go to the desk, tell them you have lost your passport, show them the scan of it that you of course keep on your cloud storage, and invite them to make the necessary checks to verify your identity. You cannot be refused entry to the EU once they have established that you are indeed an EU citizen.)

At the moment there is no actual legal requirement to enter the Schengen area with an EU passport if you have one. However, when ETIAS comes in, EU citizens - even if they have another, non-EU passport - will not be able to get an ETIAS, just as UK citizens today can't get an ETA. (Exactly how closely this will be enforced isn't clear, so maybe people with dual nationality who never got an EU passport will just get the ETA which works out cheaper, but the rule is fairly clear: enter with the "local" passport, which also saves you time.)

"just in case" of what?

Your friend may take longer than you to get through passport control, but you really ought to use the EU passport to enter the EU and your British passport to enter UK. As we have all now learned.

I don't understand why you would do that. Just in case of what?

No - you don't need to do EES checks if you have an EU passport. Leave on your French one, reenter on your UK one. There should be a different queue.

“Just in case” I don’t know what exactly. Maybe if I were to lose my French pp.
All this ETA, ETIAS, EES business is quite confusing. I always take both passports whenever I travel.