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United Kingdom nationals travelling to Europe have been recently warned that sometime next year, they will start facing long queues at the borders due to the biometric checks that the European Union intends to impose soon.

The European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS) and the Entry-Exit System (EES) are set to become effective in mid-2022. The first is a document that third country citizens under the EU visa-free regime, including here UK nationals, will have to obtain before travelling to the Schengen Area.

The second, on the other hand, is an automated IT system for registering travellers from third countries, both short-stay visa holders and visa-exempt travellers, each time they cross an EU external border.

UK transport bosses fear that Brits will face longer waiting times, in particular, when using the ferry ports and the Channel Tunnel.

During a meeting of the UK Lords Committee on Tuesday, November 2, during which the Justice and Home Affairs Committee debated on the two new EU border management systems, the ETIAS and the EES, the head of EU exit for the Dover Harbour Board Tim Reardon said that not only the waiting lines would be longer, but travellers would also have to step out of the vehicles in order to complete the controls.

There is no way of doing a biometric control without getting everyone out of the vehicle Thats the one thing on our site which cannot happen because youre in the middle of live traffic It would be equivalent to asking people to get out of their car at a motorway toll booth. Its fundamentally unsafe, and it cant happen, Reardon said during the debate.

There is no such thing as an e-gate for a car, and there is no such thing as an e-gate process for people travelling as a group theyre all one-at-a-time processes, Reardon added.

The strategy director and company secretary for Eurostar, Gareth Williams, was also present at the meeting. According to him, August could, in particular, become a worrisome period, as thats when the highest number of Brits travel to France.

If we take the peak of August, which is where we have the most number of likely first-time travellers on peak trains its up to 80 per cent of people who will have to go through the system, Williams said, trying to point out the gravity of the issue.

The EES system is set to become operational in the first half of 2022. However, SchengenVisaInfo.com has recently reported that the system may be delayed further in the second half of the year, which means that the functionalisation of the ETIAS will also be delayed.

Yet, the eu-LISA, which is the EU Agency for the Operational Management of Large-Scale IT, has already started recruiting the staff to work at the systems and has also opened ETIAS registration procedures for air carriers, sea carriers, and international carriers transporting groups overland by coach.

The registration enables carriers to receive all information necessary for the preparation of their respective systems and business processes in order to consult the EU IT systems managed by eu-LISA, as the latter is regulated in the EES and ETIAS legislation, the Agency had announced while opening the registration procedures.

Once both systems start operating, about 1.4 billion travellers, citizens of over 60 world countries, who can travel visa-free to the 26 Schengen Area countries in Europe, will have to apply for a travel authorisation before reaching the territory of any of these countries.

See the article here:
Brits Travelling to EU Could Face Long Border Queues From Next Year Due to Upcoming Biometric Checks - SchengenVisaInfo.com - SchengenVisaInfo.com