Hello, and welcome to your weekly pulse of public policy. Before we get going this week, I’d like to plug this report by the Patients Association, which is the result of my first project as a freelancer. It presents the results of a survey that produced a lot of rich data and some very interesting findings, chief among which (in my opinion) was the clear message about how the current crisis in the NHS is making it harder for clinicians to practise shared decision making. This isn’t exactly a surprise, but the findings nail it down very clearly, and show how the NHS’s well-publicised problems compromise the quality of patient care in a way that isn’t just to do with access difficulties or long waiting times. If you know someone who might be in the market for a similar piece of work, please point them my way.
So, now to business. This week’s article is one of those about a problem that looks likely to become a lot more well known in the near future, if something isn’t done to solve difficulties with the introduction of a new policy initiative. This time round, we’re looking at the EU’s new regime for travel within the Schengen area: the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) and the closely related Entry and Exist System (EES). (Please note this is not travel advice, and certainly not legal advice, and should not be relied on as either.)
Both systems arose from the EU’s “smart borders” initiative, and have their origins at least as far back as 2008, when the European Commission issued a communication suggesting an entry/exit system for its borders and a “registered traveller programme” (which was nominally scrapped, but whose descendant is effectively ETIAS). This is an effort to have sight of entry and exit via routes other than air travel, which are already tightly controlled. The other major relevant policy development from a UK perspective is of course Brexit: ETIAS will apply to non-EU citizens entering the Schengen area, so as UK citizens have now lost their EU citizenship, that means ETIAS applies to them (one small wrinkle is that Gibraltar is now de facto part of Schengen, so residents of Gibraltar retain free movement, barring any future games of silly buggers by Her Majesty’s Government). The point about Schengen is the operative one though: ETIAS will apply to UK citizens entering Schengen nations even if they are not EU members (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland), but not to EU states that are outside Schengen.
So what’s the significance of ETIAS? The EU is promoting it as a system to let people travel to and within the Schengen area without a visa, which it is. But UK citizens can do that already: what will change is that you’ll need to register with ETIAS before you make trips in the future. Technically therefore it is a visa waiver scheme, and it’s certainly more generous than the visa regime: it allows you to be in the Schengen area for 90 days out of a period of 180, and your registration remains valid for three years or until your passport expires, whichever comes sooner (compared to a standard visa, which is valid for one lot of 90 days in 180 but no more). It allows travel for “tourism, transit or business”. Registration will apparently cost €7, compared to €60 for a visa.
I say “apparently” because getting firm information on the start of the ETIAS regime is surprisingly hard. Its introduction has been delayed several times, and a firm date for when it starts doesn’t appear to be available on either Europa.eu or gov.uk. It looks like a firm date has yet to be confirmed, which is probably part of the explanation for low public awareness of the coming change. When media coverage starts in earnest, we can expect to see plenty of accusations of ETIAS being “revenge for Brexit” (despite the UK being one of 61 countries in its scope) and of it being part of a European “papers please” culture that we are better off out of. I can at least see how the latter case can be made: the whole point, after all, is to monitor, and police, people crossing the borders in question.
Other details also remain unclear (as far as I could find out – as ever, I’ll be happy to be pointed towards further information by better informed readers). You will need to apply for ETIAS ahead of travelling (at least 72 hours) using an online system: this will check against several databases relating to crime, security, public health and so on, and in most cases clear you for entry. In time this clearance might get built into online travel and accommodation booking systems (or a declaration of ETIAS clearance made mandatory, at least). Given that we’re talking about international travel, which costs money anyway, the €7 fee probably isn’t going to be the difference for many people between being able to make a trip and not being able to (and while the requirement to register appears to apply to all passport-holders, the fee looks like it will be waived for people under 18 and over 70). But what about people who can’t use the internet – is there an alternative way of applying? And what about people whose applications are turned down? Guidance from the charity Unlock suggests that people will only have to declare relatively serious criminal convictions, and that these will involve further online questions and a manual review. For people refused permission to enter, for this or other reasons, there is a right of appeal to the country that took the decision, but it’s unclear how accessible this will be or whether it’s the only appeal avenue or available in all cases.
However, ETIAS isn’t likely to be the big problem. Far more concerning, to some organisations in particular, is EES, the system that will actually record comings and goings from the Schengen area, as distinct from granting permission to enter it. The latest official word appears to be that EES is “expected” to be operational at the end of September this year, which clearly implies that it might not be. And the idea seems to be that ETIAS will become operational six months after EES starts up, so the lack of clarity there at least makes a bit of sense.
While some messaging emphasises that ETIAS doesn’t require any biometric data, that’s only because EES requires it later on. When you first go through the system, you will provide four fingerprints and there will be an image recognition check. On future occasions, image recognition alone will do the work (unless there’s a problem and presumably then your fingerprints come back into play). This replaces the current system of stamping passports, which gives a clue about the reasons why it might cause problems.
The EU’s own technical study has found that at airports the new process will make little difference provided the extra time added to each check is no more than 60 seconds compared to current procedures, and none at all at 30 seconds extra. However, it also found that at land borders, the impact could get much more significant much more quickly: for checks on vehicles, the added dwelling time should, it says, be kept to no more than 30 seconds to have “minimal adverse effects”.
So, how do you apply biometric checks to a person or group of people in a car or other road vehicle? You can’t. Or more accurately, there is no well developed checkpoint system. It may be feasible for workers to move around in queues of vehicles with hand-held fingerprint scanners and visual recognition devices. Or people could be required to leave their vehicles and go to a booth. Either solution would be cumbersome and somewhat dangerous. No better solution appears to exist. Tim Reardon, head of EU Exit for Dover Harbour Board, has been widely quoted as pithily saying, “There is no such thing as an e-gate for a car.” And likewise for freight: Elizabeth de Jong of Logistics UK testified to the Commons Transport Committee that two minutes of extra processing per lorry would create a 17-mile queue at Dover. Implicit in this is that our juxtaposed border with France, whereby the border checks are done on our side of the Channel, make the problems particularly acute.
The same concern has arisen in respect of the Channel Tunnel. Eurostar testified to the same committee that they have modelled a requirement of 92 seconds per check for travellers using EES for the first time, and 50 seconds for repeat users. In normal times, up to 80% of travellers can be first-timers in the August holiday peak, meaning that of the 1,800 people taking an international train from St Pancras each hour, 1,500 will need a first-time check-in. They estimate that this will require 30 kiosks, and it’s unclear whether sufficient space exists at St Pancras for them or not, even with a major reorganisation of that part of the station. Gareth Williams, strategy director and company secretary for Eurostar, said in his evidence: “whatever the timing is, we don’t see a solution.” Eurotunnel has done similar maths and reached similar conclusions: 600 vehicles per hour at peak times means 1,600 to 1,700 passengers per hour having to enrol for EES. Their testimony to the committee was that this is not possible in the space available.
Even if solutions can be found, the upshot looks like being a permanent slowing-down in the process of getting into the Schengen area, certainly by means other than air travel – although for most people, this will add a matter of moments to their journey, provided massive logjams can be avoided (or at least, eventually resolved). There are other concerns, however: the Justice and Home Affairs Committee has been raising concerns about the profiling of UK citizens, and other matters relating to use of data. It points out that the net effect of all these changes for some people may be that in practice they lose the ability to travel to Europe altogether.
So, what has the government been doing to resolve these issues? Mainly it appears to have been developing buck-passing into an internationally competitive sport, with the Home Office, Department of Transport and others variously pointing fingers at each other, drawing distinctions between the development of the policy, the implementation of it and responsibility for dealing with the consequences, and regularly saying that they are working with (that is to say, blaming) French and EU counterparts who will actually be implementing the system. To the extent that the central challenge is one of getting transport infrastructure and services to work effectively, responsibility sits with the Department of Transport. Given that I am publishing this on the first day of a period of extensive disruption to the railway network that the DfT appears to have actively encouraged, or even directly provoked… you might be well advised to get that holiday to France in before the end of this year rather than waiting until 2023.