Your support helps us to tell the story<\/p>\n
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.<\/p>\n
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.<\/p>\n
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.<\/p>\n
Your support makes all the difference.<\/strong>Read more<\/p>\n Two days before the EU entry-exit system<\/a> takes effect, a leading travel industry figure has warned that British travellers should allow up to four hours from touchdown for delays at European airports.<\/p>\n Julia Lo Bue-Said, chief executive of the Advantage Travel Partnership, was speaking to the BBC Today programme about the impact of Europe\u2019s new digital borders scheme<\/a> \u2013 which starts to be rolled out on Sunday 12 October.<\/p>\n Third-country nationals, including UK passport holders, will be obliged to provide fingerprints and facial biometrics when entering the Schengen area \u2013 comprising all EU<\/a> countries except Ireland and Cyprus, plus Iceland, Norway and Switzerland.<\/p>\n European Union member states have been given six months to roll out the entry-exit system (EES). But there are concerns that key airports in southern Europe could be overwhelmed by the sheer number of British holidaymakers.<\/p>\n Ms Lo Bue-Said said: \u201cThe concern will be, when you have flights arriving at one of these airports, at the same time, it\u2019s already a bottleneck \u2013 this is going to add even more of an issue.<\/p>\n \u201cSo our advice is actually to make sure, where possible, you\u2019re leaving yourself between three and four hours from the point of entry.\u201d<\/p>\n The Today presenter, Nick Robinson, interjected: \u201cThree or four hours? If you\u2019re going away for the weekend, you might as well not bother.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms Lo Bue-Said continued, \u201cYou may be going for a concert, you may be going for a meeting, you may be going for a wedding, for a cruise.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re not leaving yourself enough time and you unfortunately arrive at an airport where there is a bottleneck, which in a lot of places there are already, this is going to add another layer of frustration and delay.\u201d<\/p>\n Initially, only a small proportion of British travellers will be required to provide biometrics. Each nation is making its own decision about how to roll out the digital borders scheme.<\/p>\n While the Czech Republic, Estonia and Luxembourg<\/a> say they will process all arrivals and departures from day one. The UK\u2019s most popular overseas nation, Spain, will initially apply the EES only to a single arriving flight<\/a> at Madrid airport on Sunday.<\/p>\n Within six months, though, every entry and exit across a Schengen frontier should be noted on a central database.<\/p>\n In the hour from 11.50pm on Friday night, 10 October, Palma<\/a> airport in Spain is expecting nine flight arrivals from the UK \u2013 carrying more than 1,500 people, the vast majority of them British passport holders. The Independent has counted 80 kiosks for biometric registration at the Mallorcan airport.<\/p>\n When the EES was first conceived, the UK was part of the EU<\/a> \u2013 and there was no expectation that British travellers would be subject to the checks. But under the Brexit<\/a> deal, Boris Johnson<\/a>\u2019s government negotiated for UK passport holders to become third-country nationals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-488121","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115349465630902940","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488121","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=488121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}