The UK Foreign Office has issued a new bulletin for travellers heading to European Union nations following confusion among travellers and passengers being wrongly turned away by airlines. It has updated its online advice in an attempt to raise awareness of the rules surrounding validity dates.
The information covers more than 30 European countries including popular holiday destinations, such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece and Portugal.
The advice update states: “If you are planning to travel to an EU country (except Ireland), or Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino or Vatican City, you must follow the Schengen area passport requirements.
“Your passport must be:
• issued less than 10 years before the date you enter the country (check the ‘date of issue’)
• valid for at least three months after the day you plan to leave (check the ‘expiry date’)
“You must check your passport meets these requirements before you travel. If your passport was issued before 1 October 2018, extra months may have been added to its expiry date. Contact the embassy of the country you are visiting if you think that your passport does not meet both these requirements. Renew your passport if you need to.”
Meanwhile, MPs have warned that Passport Office “chaos” has left people experiencing phone hotline waits of up to nine hours, making 40 calls and also missing key family events. The Home Office faced demands to reveal when the backlog will be cleared and to offer compensation to people who do not have their passport applications sorted within 10 weeks.
But Home Office minister, Tom Pursglove, admitted the 10-week target is “not guaranteed” insisting 700 extra staff will have been recruited “by the summer” to help. The Government expects 9.5 million British passport applications to be dealt with in 2022, with Covid restrictions on travel resulting in just four million applications in 2020 and five million in 2021 by comparison.
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