EU to water down Brexit travel checks for British passengers as new border plan delayed again

EU plans for more stringent post-Brexit checks on holidaymakers entering Europe from the UK have been delayed again – with final plans also watererd down over fears of long queues at borders.

The new approach sees rules around one key element of the entry-exit system – biometrics, where officials would take fingerprints and a photograph of a traveller’s face – loosened.

Passengers had been expecting to face the new Schengen Area border checks from 6 October. But The Independent has learnt the new launch date for the EES is Sunday 10 November – with a “last resort” option to postpone by a week to 17 November to ensure member states are ready.

The system has been repeatedly pushed back, having originally been due to launch in 2021.

With the potential for travellers to be caught in queues at busy transport hubs, the scheme will now see the introduction of a “relief valve”, which will mean many people at crowded checkpoints could be excused biometric registration – fingerprints taken and a photo of the face – on first entry. This would significantly reduce delays.

Concerns have previously been raised about how the border checks will work, with some EU member states who have modelled the effects on airport immigration queues estimating that each passenger could take up to four times longer to process.

In January 2024, MPs were warned that Brits travelling to Europe could face waits of 14 hours or more at border control unless measures are introduced to prevent delays.

The latest delay to EES has been caused by concerns that not all nations are ready for the switch from manual to digital checks, as well as to avoid long queues of passengers in the October half-term exodus from the UK.

British passport holders will be by far the most numerous group affected by the entry-exit system, which was initially developed before the Brexit vote.

Three locations in the UK have “juxtaposed” border controls, with French frontier police conducting checks: the Port of Dover, Eurotunnel’s Folkestone terminal and the Eurostar hub at London St Pancras.

They were designed with the assumption that British passport holders would only ever be subject to “light touch” checks. But after the UK chose to become subject to the much deeper requirements of EES, there have been fears of extreme queues at these…