Quickly, most of your European passport stamps will likely be a relic of the previous. Later this 12 months, the 29 nations of the European Schengen Space will stop stamping your journey paperwork and as a substitute change to a brand new system the European Union argues will pace up border management and enhance safety.
“At each single airport, each single harbor, each single street into Europe, we may have digital border controls,” EU commissioner Ylva Johansson mentioned in a speech on August 16, including, “When that occurs, it is going to be goodbye to passport stamping, hiya to digital checks.”
The brand new program is slated to roll out November 10 with the brand new automated Entry/Exit System (EES), which can register non-EU vacationers digitally. Underneath EES protocol, and after the implementation of the brand new system, vacationers’ faces and fingerprints will likely be scanned after they enter Europe for the primary time. The software program will then take the vacationers’ biometric knowledge, which will likely be used to cross-reference their passport info (together with identify, ID quantity, date of delivery, and difficulty and expiration date) and confirm their arrival and exit. As soon as that info is taken from vacationers, solely a facial scan will likely be required for future visits.
Confirming vacationers’ identities and their comings and goings digitally removes the necessity to bodily stamp passports. “EES will change the present system of handbook stamping of passports, which is time-consuming, doesn’t present dependable knowledge on border crossings, and doesn’t permit a scientific detection of overstayers,” the European Fee’s Division for Migration and Dwelling Affairs mentioned in a press release.
EES was initially speculated to launch in 2022 however has been delayed till now. Based on the European Union, EES “will likely be an automatic IT system for registering vacationers from third-countries, each short-stay visa holders and visa-exempt vacationers, every time they cross an EU exterior border.”
Which European nations will not be stamping passports?
The brand new digital EES is being adopted by the 29 nations within the European Schengen Space. They’re:
- Austria
- Belgium
- Bulgaria
- Croatia
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Hungary
- Iceland
- Italy
- Latvia
- Liechtenstein
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Malta
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
How will the brand new digital entry course of in Europe work?
To make use of the system, vacationers must have a biometric passport, in any other case often called an digital or e-passport, which Individuals have had since 2007 (the image with two rectangles and a circle within the center on the duvet of your passport signifies it’s a biometric passport).
Guests to the EU with out biometric passports will likely be required to bear further processing on the border and won’t be able to make use of the self-service passport kiosks. Anybody who refuses to offer the info is not going to be allowed to enter the EU. Along with recording passport info, the system will log exactly when vacationers enter and exit the nation and whether or not or not they’ve ever been refused entry.
Who may have entry to vacationers’ private knowledge?
Based on a web-based EU explainer concerning the new EES system, entities that may have entry to your private knowledge will embrace European border, visa, and immigration management; Europol for legislation enforcement functions; transport carriers to confirm the variety of entries approved for a specific visa holder; and “below strict circumstances, your knowledge could also be transferred to a different nation (inside or outdoors the EU) or worldwide group.”
Time will inform whether or not the brand new system will ship on its guarantees of extra dependable and quicker border crossings. Both means, for individuals who treasure stamps as souvenirs of locations as soon as visited, the change is likely to be arduous to abdomen. Nevertheless, it’ll additionally imply that vacationers who continuously go to the EU, be it for work or pleasure, might not must get a brand new passport as usually.
Is that this the identical as Europe’s new ETIAS journey authorization course of?
The brand new EES system is said to however separate from the additionally delayed ETIAS journey authorization program for Europe. The plan is to launch ETIAS six months after EES is up and working, which means that it’s now anticipated to begin within the first half of 2025. Vacationers from outdoors of the EU will likely be charged a seven-euro (about $7.75 with present conversion charges) entry payment for an entry authorization that will likely be legitimate for 3 years or till the passport related to it expires.
Although vacationers might want to apply for ETIAS forward of time, it’s not formally a visa; it’s extra just like the US ESTA, the Canadian eTA, or the British ETA, that are all programs that decide the eligibility of holiday makers to journey to the nation below a visa waiver program.
