The fear of long delays and bottlenecks from incoming EU border security rules is threatening not just airports and trains but also ferry services.
The EU’s new border security controls are set to begin launching this autumn, with the Entry/Exit System (EES) coming into force on October 12, 2025.
It will see non-EU travellers (with the exception of residency card and visa holders) entering the Schengen area required to provide biometric data, including fingerprints and a photo of their face, before they can travel into the bloc.
Information from their passports, and about their trip, will also be collected.
It will, in theory, prevent the need for passports to be stamped when travelling in and out of the EU.
It will be brought in via a 'phased approach' with not all border points implementing the systems on October 12, but needing to do so in the following six months.
Many people travel between the UK and France via ferry, leading to questions over how the system will work for sea-bound passengers.
People travelling between Ireland and the UK will not be affected.
Border controls will vary between ports
Some ferry travellers, such as those leaving the UK from Portsmouth, will only see changes once they reach France, where they will have to hand over this information before exiting the port.
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This is the general case, with EES checks instead being carried out at entry-points to Schengen as opposed to exit points from non-EU countries.
For example, if you are flying from London Heathrow to Nice, you will only go through the digital border checks once at Nice airport, and not in the UK.
Two of the main UK-France ports on British soil, however, have long-standing special agreements with French border authorities, meaning passports are checked (and currently stamped) on the UK side before passengers cross.
This is the case at Dover Port and at the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone, as well as at London St Pancras’ Eurostar terminal.
In these locations, EES facilities to collect biometric data will be installed, with passengers handing over information before boarding their ferry (or train).
How will this work?
In Dover, there will be a new section of the port available exclusively for coaches, which will park in this area as passengers disembark and pass through EES controls.
They will then re-board the coaches, which will be ‘sealed’ (i.e no one is able to get on or off) until the vehicle is on the ferry.
Cars will continue to use current lanes – although the port is planning to fill in parts of the old dock to expand the space available – with officials coming through by foot to collect details on special tablets.
It has not been clarified if passengers will need to come out of their cars or if the tablet will be passed to people inside cars. Dover is reported to be building a canopy to cover the area where these checks will take place.
The estimated time to collect the necessary data for each passenger will more than double, from around 45 second to 90 seconds for a border official to stamp a passport, to more than two minutes for biometric data to be collected.
Some UK media including The Times report it could take up to seven minutes per person for the data to be collected.
In theory, it means for a car of four, border crossing previously would have taken between three and six minutes, and may now take up to 28.
Is an app on the way?
Ferry bosses and some politicians have called for the implementation of a smartphone app which travellers would be encouraged to use so as to hand over as much information as possible in advance, to keep processing times short.
France’s larger airports, and St Pancras, meanwhile, are putting in place self-service ‘kiosks’ which passengers can use on arrival at the station to provide some of the information required.
In an airport, conditions for taking photographs – and the available space to install kiosks – makes these kiosks ‘ideal,’ according to Jack Steer, CEO of P&O Ferries. However, he said current EU legislation still requires at least part of the process to be completed in person in front of border police.
The Connexion was told by the French airports’ union that fingerprints, in particular, must still be supervised by officials, so at present it is not expected that everything could be automated, whether by ‘kiosks’ or an app.
Mr Steer and others are, however, calling for EES implementation to be delayed until an app can be made available, although this appears unlikely to happen.
At Dover and Folkestone, where weather conditions already impact processing, it is feared that storms and rain could make capturing the necessary data difficult.
