A scheme designed to boost the numbers of French children able to travel to Britain for school trips is reportedly in peril as a result of an overhaul of entry requirements in the UK.<\/p>\n
New rules for French school trips were introduced in December last year after a meeting between the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the then UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak.<\/p>\n
The pair struck a deal to allow French pupils to travel to Britain using national identity cards, and for their non-EU classmates to enter without the need for a visa, in an attempt to address a decline in visits after Brexit<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, the Financial Times reported<\/a> that the scheme was at risk because of the UK\u2019s new electronic travel authorisation (ETA) scheme, which is due to come into force on 2 April 2025 and will require all EU visitors to register before travelling to the UK, a process that requires children to have a passport.<\/p>\n The FT cited a letter written by Val\u00e9rie Boned, the president of Les Entreprises du Voyage, the main trade body for travel agencies in France<\/a>, to the UK home secretary, Yvette Cooper, on 8 October asking whether the programme for French school groups would be retained. The group said it had not received a reply from the Home Office.<\/p>\n The Home Office declined to comment.<\/p>\n Boned wrote in her letter, seen by the FT: \u201cThe sooner we manage to clear the situation, the less impact it will have on the number of school trips for 2025,.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n According to data from Les Entreprises du Voyage, the scheme has led to a 30% increase in school trips to the UK from France, which it said had been 60% below 2019 levels when the scheme was introduced.<\/p>\n The FT also cited French government officials who had \u201cexpressed concern\u201d to the UK government over how the ETA programme would affect the school trips scheme.<\/p>\n The Labour government has committed to \u201cresetting\u201d relations with the EU. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, is under pressure from Brussels for the reset to include opening discussions on a youth mobility scheme that would allow young people from the EU to live and work in the UK for a fixed period, and vice versa.<\/p>\n However, Starmer has repeatedly ruled out such a measure, despite the UK having similar arrangements with more geographically distant partners such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A scheme designed to boost the numbers of French children able to travel to Britain for school trips…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-261871","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114846589481084473","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}