British tourists will have to pay a £6 fee to enter mainland Europe under American-style plans that will come into force next year.
Holidaymakers heading to the likes of France, Greece and Spain, will have to pay €7 to be screened ahead of their visit, EU officials confirmed last night.
The move will allow countries to pre-screen travellers entering the border-free Schengen area in order to prevent the need for visas after Britain walked away from the EU.
The European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) will replicate the US Electronic System for Travel Authorisation (ESTA), which grants citizens from 39 countries a 90-day visa-free stay.
On Tuesday the regulations for the system were confirmed. The ETIAS plan was originally shelved in 2016, before the UK voted to leave the EU.
It is being brought in, in part, to avoid the need for more complex visas - though travellers who need visas to enter the EU will still require them.
The ETIAS scheme is expected to be in place by the end of 2022.
Travel documents, such as a passport, will also be required.
There will also be questions on a person's criminal record and if they have ever asked to leave an EU country by officials.
The forms will be available online, with applicants asked to submit a €7 fee, which the ETIAS system will then check through an automated process. If an issue is flagged, it will be checked manually.
After that a person will either be accepted or rejected within a four-week window - with those rejected allowed an appeal.
Airlines will be expected to check that a person has been authorised to travel to the EU under the ETIAS scheme.
Once accepted, it will allow British passengers entry into the Schengen area multiple times over a three-year period.
The scheme is expected to cover 60 countries, including the UK, Australia and the US.
"ETIAS will not change which non-EU countries are subject to a visa requirement and will also not introduce a new visa requirement for nationals of countries that are visa-exempt," the proposal says.
Is £6 a fair price to avoid having to apply for a visa? Let us know in the comments below
"Visa-exempt non-EU nationals will only need a few minutes to fill in an online application, which in a vast majority of cases (expected to be over 95 per cent) will result in auto matic approval."
The UK Government was also understood to be considering a similar visa waiver system for non-British nationals to enter on pre-screening from 2024.
However Universities Minister Michelle Donelan today said there are currently no plans to introduce this in the UK.
"I believe we have no plans to do that," Ms Donelan told LBC, when asked whether Britain could charge EU nationals to enter the UK.
