EU expected to delay fingerprinting and facial recognition checks at Dover

theguardian.com:

The EU is expected to delay introducing fingerprinting and facial recognition checks in Dover amid fears it could mar travel to next year’s summer Olympics in Paris. The move, which will be discussed by the EU in June, would come as a relief to coach operators and transport bosses, whose passengers endured delays of up to 14 hours at Easter trying to go to Calais, and who feared “pandemonium” if fingerprinting were added to passport checks at Dover, Eurotunnel in Folkestone and the Eurostar terminal in London.

Doug Bannister, the chief executive at the Port of Dover, said a repeat or escalation of the congestion at Easter would be “unacceptable”.

Before Brexit, checks on passports of drivers, passengers and schoolchildren on coach tours were cursory, but queues have built up because of the return of coach travel and the post-Brexit requirement that border police “wet stamp” passports and check that the passenger is not overstaying.

At Easter, coaches were taking up to an hour to process.

Anthony Marett, chair of the coach operators’ association UKCOA, said: “Easter was a perfect storm. You had coach travel returning at a scale not seen since the pandemic. You had all of the coaches descending on one infrastructure all at the same time. The net result of it was just pandemonium.” He added: “If they introduce further checks that lead to delays, we think there will be quite a serious incident.”

Under the new entry and exit system (EES) the EU planned to introduce in November, passengers would have to agree to fingerprinting and facial image capture the first time they arrived on the continent. After that, the data, including any record of refused entry, should allow quicker processing, said John Keefe, the head of public affairs