The boss of the Port of Dover has warned that the brand new EU Entry-Exit System may trigger “significant and continued disruption for a very long time”.
Doug Bannister, chief government of the UK’s busiest ferry port, instructed MPs at Wednesday’s Transport Select Committee assembly that seven months earlier than the proposed introduction of latest biometric checks, the port doesn’t know the foundations and procedures that may apply.
The Brexit withdrawal settlement made United Kingdom a “third country” with strict controls on entry and exit. At Dover, frontier controls are “juxtaposed” with French officers conducting checks on British soil.
At the beginning of the primary summer season peak in July, lengthy queues constructed up because of the have to stamp each passport – and, stated Mr Bannister, the delayed arrival of some Police aux Frontières officers from France.
Next summer season, harder border checks that the UK helped develop whereas a member will apply to British passport holders.
Under the EU Entry-Exit System, every time a third-country nationwide crosses an EU exterior border, the system will register the date and place of entry and exit. Fingerprints and a facial biometric can even be checked.
The European Union expects the system to enter service in May 2023. It says the Entry-Exit System “will replace the current system of manual stamping of passports, which is time-consuming, does not provide reliable data on border crossings, and does not allow a systematic detection of over-stayers”.
But the Port of Dover boss has instructed MPs: “We haven’t seen with the process is, we don’t know what the technology is, and so it’s very difficult then to estimate what the time would be.
“We need the rules of the game. We need to see what the technology is going to be like.
“We need a sufficient amount of time to trial, test and train to use the technology before implementation – knowing early and then making certain that we’re getting as much lead time as we possibly can to ensure that we’ve got the right people on the ground with the right processes to make certain that it operates properly.
He warned MPs that checkpoint times for motorists leaving the UK could increase seven-fold.
“What we have heard is that it could be two minutes per person to register, plus two minutes for the car, so that’s 10 minutes for a car full of four people,” he stated.
“If it comes in, in the worst possible way, in the way that we fear, it’s going to have significant and continued disruption for a very long time.
“For next summer’s getaway, we’re in a whole new ball game.
“If the border gets sticky, it backs up very, very quickly.”
Huw Merriman, the senior Tory MP who’s the committee chair, requested: “So there’s seven months to go and you still don’t know what the rules of the road going to be in terms of what you need to do and what passengers need to do to comply with this?”
“Correct,” stated Mr Bannister.
Mr Merriman described the state of affairs as “completely bizarre and unacceptable”.
Source: www.unbiased.co.uk