Great barrier grief: that is what the UK government promises to end, at least for British travellers to Germany.
“Millions of UK travellers to Germany will be able to use e-gates in the future thanks to a new agreement made between prime minister Keir Starmer and German chancellor Friedrich Merz today,” the Cabinet Office says.
“Germany will roll out the first phase of e-gates access for UK travellers by the end of August, starting with frequent travellers such as Brits with family in Germany or who travel regularly for business.”
To be more precise: by late August, the UK will join Germany’s EasyPass. That’s the branding for the e-gates, which compare the biometric data in the traveller’s passport with their face. Already citizens of China, Korea and the US can sign up for this. You must register for it, which means you go through passport control as normal at one of the bigger airports, then visit the police station for an interview.
Once enrolled, on the next visit you can use the e-gates. But be warned: unlike the passengers from your flight who have EU passports, you will not be free to go. “Proceed to the border control desk directly behind the e-gates,” say the German authorities. “You will be briefly questioned again there and receive your entry or exit stamp.”
Just as we demanded when leaving the European Union.
Boris Johnson’s fearless negotiators insisted that we must become “third-country nationals” not required to obtain a visa.
Brussels capitulated to our wish to spend hours waiting in queues; to discover that rules on passport validity meant that thousands would be turned away from planes; and to have our documents minutely examined to ensure we have not spent more than 90 days in the past 180 days within the Schengen area.
Our illustrious status is shared with citizens of many other countries, from East Timor to El Salvador. But unlike them, the British traditionally make tens of millions of journeys to the EU each year.
We would love to make more of those trips by rail, but the tangle of red tape we negotiated means there isn’t enough space for processing passengers at London St Pancras International, the Eurostar hub. Yet the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, has promised that “a direct connection linking London and Berlin” could be in place “in just a matter of years”.
In theory, trains from the UK to Germany could be running by 2030. But London to Berlin, a journey of at least nine hours? Allow me to present an equally plausible transport goal for the next five years: “Personal jetpacks for all.”
Other government claims are more plausible, if a little desperate: “Estonia has confirmed they will open up [e-gate] access at Tallinn airport in 2026.” But ministers surely know they are clutching at bureaucratic straws.
One day, a courageous political heavyweight will yell from the rooftops something that the most ardent Leave voter must accept: “Brexit has proved deeply damaging for British travellers to Europe, and we need to fix it.”
Tourists, students and business travellers have all suffered from the route of self-harm that we took after the democratic vote to leave the European Union.
Your ease of access to continental Europe this summer depends on your ancestry. UK citizens wise enough to have close relatives in Ireland, north or south, can obtain an EU passport and regain the travel freedom we chose to surrender. But it’s nothing more than a lottery in which the right DNA, and/or birthplace, can win you the right to roam across Europe.
For everyone else, we need to negotiate a special status that reflects our passion for Europe – and the UK’s value as one of the biggest exporters of tourists in the world.
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