An EU plan to make Brits scan their fingerprints and have their photo taken at the border is set to cause travel chaos, ministers fear.
Since Britain left the EU passport holders crossing over the border have been subject to having their passports stamped.
But new plans that will see British passport holders go through fingerprint checks and face scans under a new EU Entry/Exit System (EES) will be hugely disruptive and add queues at the borders when it’s launched in the autumn, say Government ministers.
The system will check each passenger’s name and biometric data when they enter an EU country.
The new plans will be introduced in all EU countries except Cyprus and Ireland. It is also being adopted by Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
French officials will carry out the checks at the Port of Dover, Folkestone for the Eurotunnel and at St Pancras International for the Eurostar.
Lord Cameron, James Cleverly and Mark Harper have all raised concerns about the new system with French ministers.
One senior Government insider said: “The main risk is that we are in the hands of the French in those places where there is going to be disruption on UK soil,” reports the Telegraph.
French public finance watchdog Cour des Comptes believes queues at the UK-France border will at least double.
The Port of Dover said the new system could lengthen inspections on cars from 45 seconds to as long as ten minutes. The port has already seen lengthy delays thanks to increased post-Brexit checks.
And in January, Ashford Borough Council even suggested the new plans could cause traffic chaos in Britain with the potential for lengthy tailbacks along the A20 and M20.
In a response to a Government inquiry Ryanair raised significant concerns about the introduction of the plans.
The Ryanair submission said: “The aviation industry has expressed dissatisfaction with the way these programmes have been managed by EU-LISA [the EU agency in charge of the IT system] and currently we are awaiting the commencement of testing, as there are no test environments ready and available for us to use yet.”
Ryanair added that the procedures to handle possible system outages “remain unclear.”
