Summer holidays under threat from new EU fingerprint guidelines
13 October 2022, 12:56
New EU fingerprint checks are threatening to ruin next summer’s holiday getaway, the boss of the Port of Dover has warned.
Doug Bannister, Dover’s chief executive, said the new EU system of biometric checks for travellers could cause “significant and continued disruption for a very long time.”
The EU’s new “Entry-Exit System” (EES) will require any Briton who wants to travel to the EU to apply for a travel authorisation document that will allow them into the bloc for three years, the Telegraph reports.
Every time they seek to enter the EU they will be expected to show a facial image and provide four fingerprints from which only children aged under 12 will be exempt.
The system is due to go live in May next year after being delayed for a year due to technical glitches.
Mr Bannister told the Commons transport committee: “It’s going to have a higher impact on families wishing to go abroad next summer.
“We’ve heard that there could be some technology that is sort of an iPad with handholds to register the fingerprints. But we haven’t trialled it. How do you pass that around a car? What happens if you’ve got a child asleep in the backseat?
“What if it’s a dark stormy night and the lighting is inappropriate? We haven’t tested all of that.”
He added: “We need to know what the rules of the game are. We need to see what the technology is going to be, we need a sufficient amount of time to trial, test and train to use that technology before implementation.”
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Tens of thousands of families saw their holiday plans ruined in July due to miles of gridlocked traffic around the Kent port. This was blamed on a lack of French border police.
The first trials of the technology are due to begin this month in Calais and Mr Bannister has been invited to view them, although he said the port had not yet been given any details of the scheme’s rules.
The regulation sets out that all adults and teenagers will have to provide biometric data of facial image and fingerprints.
They will also need to supply personal data including first name and surname, date of birth, nationality, sex as well as the travel document and the three-letter code of the issuing country of the document.
