Sir Keir Starmer was accused of failing to slash passport queues abroad as it emerged that nine in ten EU airports still bar Brits from using e-gates.
Despite the Prime Minister boasting earlier this year that his EU reset deal would see Britons ‘sailing through the e-gates’, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that just 11 per cent of European airports allow British holidaymakers to use them.
Starmer hailed the e-gates change as one of the key elements of his deal with Brussels in May, stating at the time that ‘instead of waiting in long queues at passport control, Brits travelling to Europe will now be able to use e-gates’.
But just 45 out of the 400 commercial airports in the EU had given e-gate access to British travellers by the end of July, according to figures obtained via a Freedom of Information (FoI) request to the Cabinet Office, seen by The MoS.
James MacCleary MP, the Liberal Democrat spokesman for Europe who filed the request, said: ‘The Government presented their e-gate announcement as a done deal, but Starmer is yet to deliver on his promise. Thousands of British holidaymakers faced queues and delays due to those same technological barriers this summer.
‘The Government’s so-called ‘reset’ with Europe is once again coming up short.’
It comes after this newspaper reported in May that ministers were begging European countries to allow Britons to use e-gates before the summer holidays.
The deal states that, from October, there will be no legal barriers preventing EU states from offering access to e-gates. A new digital scheme, the EU Entry/Exit System, which gathers biometric data on those arriving in the EU from non-member countries, will come into force that month.
Sir Keir Starmer was accused of failing to slash passport queues abroad as it emerged that nine in ten EU airports still bar Brits from using e-gates
File image: But just 45 out of the 400 commercial airports in the EU had given e-gate access to British travellers by the end of July
But Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds wrote to representatives of European countries such as Greece, urging them to allow Brits to use e-gates ‘now’.
Despite this, the FoI response shows that no Greek airport was allowing British citizens to use e-gates as of July 23. Neither were some of the EU’s busiest airports, including Madrid–Barajas in Spain and Frankfurt in Germany.
The second-busiest EU airport, Amsterdam Schiphol in the Netherlands, only let Brits use e-gates when exiting the country.
A Cabinet Office spokesman said: ‘The UK-EU Summit confirmed that there will be no legal barriers to e-gates use for UK nationals after the introduction of the Entry/Exit System, which will open up e-gates across the EU. In the meantime, we’ve secured further agreements for e-gates use in individual EU countries, including Germany for UK frequent travellers.’
