Comment by bilekas
1 day ago
> in the EU you need to go through it both on every arrival and every departure.
You absolutely don't. If you've done it once on your passport/ID you don't need to do it again. And infact there are fast track autonomous lanes that you can just scan your EU passport with biometric chip and fly through. (In theory, there's always idiots who don't realise they don't have it)
People without EU citizenship also enter EU.
Recent changes to EES system have been a disaster, and as op has pointed out, people do have to scan their biometrics more than once coming from a non-EU country. In some cases even if you are a EU resident in case the airport has no specific queues.
> Recent changes to EES system have been a disaster
How ?
> People do have to scan their biometrics more than once coming from a non-EU country.
If the data hasn't had time to propagate then it's just a flag that you need to do it.
> In some cases even if you are a EU resident in case the airport has no specific queues.
Yes, if I arrive in Firenze airport there is maybe 2 people working on the border, if I'm in the Schengen, I don't even need to be checked. I'm not sure what you're talking about.
> People without EU citizenship also enter EU.
Clearly I'm not talking about these cases. You're not from the EU, you need to follow the rules. Sorry.
I just visited Italy. We absolutely passed through biometric scans on arrival and departure from FCO (US passports, vacation so no paper visa).
And then again at DUB outbound (US pre-clearance, so the normal Global Entry kiosk).
All of this was expected. The only thing that surprise me was there was no passport check or any other custom/immigration at Dublin on the inbound leg. We just walked from the arrival gate to the departure gate and that was that.
> And then again at DUB outbound (US pre-clearance, so the normal Global Entry kiosk).
Pre clearance from the US means nothing for Ireland, it's also not Schengen.
> The only thing that surprise me was there was no passport check or any other custom/immigration at Dublin on the inbound leg.
Because you've done it on your outbound. Ireland is also a bit more relaxed, but at the same time they can randomely ask you for your papers.
> from the arrival gate to the departure gate
If you don't pass the control, if I'm not wrong you'll never need to be rechecked. The only place it has happened to me within EU was between Ireland -> Germany -> Greece. Probably because Ireland isn't Schengen
Ireland is not in Schengen, so you were doing an international-to-international transfer. You normally don't have to go through immigration and customs for those, unless there are specific legal requirements or the airport is poorly organized.
Sure, but we went down the same hallway as everybody who was stopping in Ireland. There was just a sign at passport check with an arrow that said go on by. If I had wanted to stay in Ireland, I could’ve just walked out of the airport.
Dublin is amazingly chill with passport/visa/immigration.
I once needed an actual stamp in my passport, and the agent literally apologized to me for taking up the space. I thought she might be messing with me, but not, entirely serious.
With the introduction of EES system (whose implementation was completed only a few months ago), the full data of non-EU citizens gets collected the first time we enter the EU and then we have to verify it every subsequent time.
Not much of a hassle at airports due to the availability of self-service kiosks, somewhat of a hassle when crossing with a car, and infuriatingly annoying when using a mass transit option like a bus or a train where everyone has to step outside and wait in line to do that, adding about 20-30 minutes to the border crossing.
We used the EES system in Italy, I think (cattle gates with passport scan and photo). The line was still pretty long and slow. Mostly because people couldn’t figure out how to get their passport scanned properly or they weren’t looking at the camera or any number of other things that there were signs explaining what to do and people just couldn’t be bothered doing it correctly
I wish it was 20-30 minutes. Try 2-3 hours.
Definitely depends on the ratio of first time visitors since the introduction of the EES system (whose data needs collecting) vs returning visitors (whose data only needs verifying). I was going by my last experience, but I waited way longer than an hour in the past.
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