Imagine living in Europe and not being a citizen of the European Union or EU. You have to use the non-EU lines at other European airports, which is not fun at all. I should know, I had six years of doing just that.
The transition period for the British exit from the EU, commonly referred to as Brexit, ends on 31 December 2020. This means that from 1 January 2021, people from the United Kingdom travelling elsewhere in Europe will need to use the non-EU lines at Passport control in airports.
What Are The Non-EU Lines Like?
Several things spring to mind immediately, such as… Not fun. Time consuming. Irritating. Queues. Questions. At the time I held an Australian Passport, and any travel from Dublin, where I am based, to the UK or the continent meant pain on arrival.
First, I was standing in a queue of people from outside of Europe, which often moved slowly. The reason for that is everyone was being checked and with the inevitable language barriers and so on, speed became a distant memory.
Expecting to land and breeze through Passport control and out of the airport with no hassles is going to be a thing of the past. The non-EU lines are a unique kind of hell when you live on the continent.
Overall Thoughts
Happily for me, I put the non-EU lines behind me when I became an Irish citizen. The difference was chalk and cheese – now I could fly through Passport control with barely a second glance.
I do wonder how all of my English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish friends are going to cope from next year. Indeed, how will I cope if I am travelling with them? I’ll sail through Passport control then have to wait an hour for them to get through. Ugh!
Are you ready for the experience of the non-EU lines in future? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image by Andrew Parsons / No10 Downing Street via mirror.co.uk.
I imagine that a fair number of people who voted for Brexit will have buyer’s remorse soon, given the crash exit that appears to be imminent. Did people have to use actual passports or was/is it a passport card situation?
People have to use actual Passports in future, from what I’ve read. I’m sure it won’t be a big deal for a while as no-one is travelling, but it will be eventually.
Hi, I’m Pablo from Buenos Aires, Argentina, I have dual nationality
I was born in Argentina so I have that nationality I am also an EU citizen because my grandfather was Polish and I have no problems with passport control at the EU borders (I am Polish) but my mother is Chilean and it is irritating to spend with my father through automated passport control and then having to wait for my mother to pass the controls and ask her about everything with the consequences that this entails, delays of up to an hour, how tiring! an hour waiting behind the migration “boxes” like a couple of idiots
Imagine that and you will have a panorama that happened to me in Barajas Adolfo Suárez and in Amsterdam Schiphol last year, cumbersome and I can not do anything because she cannot pass immigration with me, something that does not happen in Santiago, Chile for example where everyone passes the same boxes (altought there are “chilean” and “Foreigner” separated zone) and the passport stamp is The same for everyone without specifying any deadline date, I went through the counters for Chileans with my mother and nobody told me anything, in Europe, I can’t understand it because they don’t stamp the passports, nor do they open them just by looking at their burgundy color, they know that you are a EU citizen. It would be easier if they let family members and couples go through the same counter one less problem and it would make life easier, right?
greetings from Buenos Aires Argentina far to the South in South America in the ass of the world as they say here!
sorry if You don’t understand i’m a native spanish speaker you know!
gracias y muy bueno el blog!!
saludos from Argentina!
pd: would like to have Paris UK immigration stamps cos Paris is France and Londres France cos “Londres” is UK not France
Your answer made perfect sense – thanks very much for taking the time to share that. I agree, it must be annoying for you to have so many delays due to immigration and I remember it very well from when I had no EU Passport. It will be interesting in future! I have not yet been to Buenos Aires or Argentina, a place I wish to get to sometime. Thank you again for the comment, I really appreciate it!
sir I am impressed by this post.sure it’s a great post.
Thank you Babar!
Traveling from Dublin to London has never required passport control as the UK and Ireland are in the CTA, and this will continue – so you must have misremembered your experience.
Travelling in the opposite direction does result in passport control, as all arrivals into Irish airports have to go through it. There is no segregation on the Irish side as there is when arriving into UK airports. However, that is neither here nor there when it comes to the article, as the British are going to have to go through it for every single European country, even the Republic of Ireland, CTA or no CTA. The only place it will be avoided is crossing by land from Northern Ireland into the Republic of Ireland.