Adam Boulton: Bank holiday travellers beware - getting to and from Europe is about to get a whole lot harder

The August bank holiday has arrived – the cue for millions to get back to work after whatever holidays they have managed to enjoy.

Over this weekend many Britons will be coming home from Europe through ports, airports and the Channel Tunnel.

Their trips may have included frustrating delays and border checks but there won’t be another summer which runs as smoothly as 2024 for many years ahead.

In a couple of months’ time, the European Union will start imposing its new “Entry-Exit System” (EES) on UK citizens.

That will mean fingerprint and biometric recognition for every British visitor to the EU’s Schengen area by the end of this year.

From November 2025 we will have to obtain a de-facto visa for entry in advance, at a cost of €7 (£6) for a three-year permit.

Nobody doubts that EES is going to lead to delays and greater costs for travellers and border control authorities alike.

For example, car passengers arriving at Dover have been told processing could take 15 hours before they get on a ferry.

The UK supported the strengthening of EU borders when it was a member state.

After Brexit, the UK now faces the consequences from the other side of the fence.

Starmer could seek to delay super-sensitive restrictions again

These extra practical frictions for UK travellers are coming in at the very time when the new Labour government in the UK is trying to establish friendlier relations with the EU.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has a meeting with the newly re-appointed European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in September and there are plans to re-establish regular meetings between the UK and the bloc.

But in terms of identity, the new system is merely a confirmation of this nation’s changed status.

From now on British citizens will be treated by the European Union in a similar way to the reception they receive from other allied nations such as Japan and the United States.

Europe is, however, overwhelmingly the main destination for British travellers, whether for business or leisure.

Last year official UK government statistics report 66 million visits by Britons to Europe, 60 million of them to core EU countries, compared to 4.5 million to North America, the next most frequently visited.

Spain, Greece, Italy, France and Portugal make up Britons’ top five foreign holiday destinations.

Making travel from the UK to Europe more irksome is super sensitive for both sides and implementation of the new border controls has been repeatedly postponed.

First planned in 2017, they were originally meant to come in in 2021. Even the latest start date for biometric checks of 10 November 2024, is a month later than the most recent October deadline. At least travellers in the autumn half-term should now avoid the hassle.

Sir Keir’s imminent talks could just possibly lead to further delay, although this seems unlikely.

What to expect in the near future

According to The Times this week, Sir Keir’s agenda is topped by agreeing to three years of freedom of movement for the under-30s both ways between the UK and the EU.

The arrangement would be similar to the one the UK now shares with New Zealand and Australia. Previously Rishi Sunak’s government flatly ruled out this idea when the EU suggested it.

So expect biometric testing to start in November.

Travelling across borders this summer, at airports and ferry ports, I could see the technology already in place, lines of booths and sensors, ready and waiting.

Air travellers will be processed on arrival in Europe. Those using ferries or trains are expected to complete the formalities at UK points of exit.

The costs and delays are likely to be here.

Eurostar is spending £8.5m on extra facilities at St Pancras, including a new overflow room.

It plans to have terminals to confirm the Electronic Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) dotted around the station as a whole because there is not enough room in its part of the terminus.

In Folkestone, where cars and lorries board the Eurotunnel, an extra £70m has been earmarked.

The Port of Dover is expanding processing facilities for coaches into its western docks and plans to have more holding space on site for cars “by 2027”.

New system ‘effectively a visa’

Officially the new compulsory permission from ETIAS to enter the EU is not a visa.

But Simon Calder, the veteran British travel journalist, says it “amounts to one” and is broadly similar to the Electronic System for Travel Authorisation (ESTA) travel waiver to the US.

He points out that both require an online application in advance, the supply of significant personal information, the payment of money and result in permission to cross a border.

As well as details of age, home address and passport, applicants will also be asked if they have criminal convictions or have recently visited war zones.

It is estimated that ETIAS will take three days to process applications.

There will be a grace period of six months for muddles after the introduction of ETIAS for UK citizens in May next year but from November 2025 those who do not have ETIAS approval will not be allowed to travel. Stamping of passports on entry and exit will be dropped.

Scammers are already active online offering to process ETIAS.

Frontex, the European Border and Coastguard Agency, stresses the only way to get an ETIAS will be to apply at europa.eu/elias, at a fixed rate.

The system is not yet open or required for UK citizens.

Issues of immigration and identity impacted by change

The EU’s Schengen travel area includes all 27 member states, except for Ireland and Cyprus, as well as Norway, Switzerland, Lichtenstein and Iceland. The Common Travel Area between Ireland and the UK remains in place.

In the long run of years, these new measures may make travel more efficient for those with the right documentation.

They will also increase the control of the authorities over who may enter their zone.

The UK and the EU both want to clamp down on illegal migration.

But inevitably the bureaucracy of travelling is also affecting how people see their own identity.

The last, pro-Brexit, UK government wanted to reach bilateral deals with individual European countries, in part to undermine the concept of European solidarity.

The EES is a pushback by the so-called “European Superstate” that it does not intend to be divided so easily.

EU citizens, who are more used than Britons to ID cards, already have to go through technological checkpoints to enter the UK and are subject to similar restrictions on duration of stay.

Practical barriers are going up between the UK and Europe, leaving those who identify as both British and European caught in the middle.

Travelling from France to Ireland by ferry this week, I could see this psychodrama advertised on the back of the vehicles coming on board.

Ireland has been transformed and liberated by its entry into the European Community in the wake of the UK. With its open border to the south, Northern Ireland has a foot in both camps. In trade terms this wound was rubbed in the long wrangle over the protocol and then the Windsor Framework.

More poignantly, the bumper stickers on the cars and trailers travelling home to the north via Cork were confused with the letters “NI” stamped on the European flag, just like on all the other member states of the European Union – to which the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland no longer belongs.

For some UK citizens, extra travel hassle and ETIAS charges may be prices worth paying for “taking back control”. Many others, with new anxieties over travel plans, followed by fretting in queues, may not feel that way.

For ordinary travellers, these changes in travel regulations to Europe may matter as much in practice as some of the new government’s more talked about challenges.

Sir Keir Starmer cannot afford to brush them aside.