Tens of millions of pounds is being spent on new IT equipment needed to enforce an EU travel rule coming into use in October – amid fears it will cause long delays at the crossings. Under the Entry Exit System (EES) non-EU nationals, including people from the UK, will have to register information such as fingerprints and a picture the first time they cross the border.
New equipment and new processing areas are being created at locations including Dover ferry port, Eurostar’s London St Pancras terminus and Eurotunnel’s Folkestone site. Dover plans to process coaches separately to cars and will build a whole new area on the sea to house the facility, and Eurostar is expanding its base at St Pancras to make more room for the huge queues.
People flying will have to provide the information when they land in EU countries, including Spain, Greece, Italy, France and Portugal. Anyone taking a ferry or train will have to provide the information before they leave.
Fingerprints and a photo will need to be taken and travellers will need to answer questions about their journey. Foreign Secretary David Cameron recently told MPs he was “really worried” about “long delays”, reports the BBC.
When the rules come into force, coaches will be diverted away from main check-in at Dover to a new processing area, with a hall full of kiosks. All passengers will get off the coaches, be processed and then get back aboard to go to check-in.
For cars people will fill in their details on a tablet in the check-in queues. Check-in is expected to rise from 45 seconds to up to two minutes. By next summer a new processing area for cars will have been built in Dover, reclaimed from the sea. Another new holding area to house the long queues will have been built by September 2027.
In St Pancras the number of border control points in the existing departures area will be doubled, which will leave no space for the new EES terminals. 49 of them will be installed at other points around the station. A coffee shop is to be removed and two other zones will be converted into queuing areas.
Eurotunnel is to hire 70 new passenger assistance staff on each side of the channel.
The company’s boss Yann Leriche recently told the BBC getting through border controls would take five to seven minutes longer
A spokesperson for the Government said it was “working closely with the EU and member states to minimise any impact at our shared borders with Europe.”
They added: “We are also working closely with the Kent Resilience Forum as well as with port authorities, ferry operators and industry to develop robust contingency plans to ensure they are prepared to minimise the risk of delays.”