GREECE GOES ITS OWN WAY AND DROPS EU ENTRY-EXIT BIOMETRICS FOR BRITISH TRAVELLERS - The Independent 19/4 by Simon Calder
You might remember the term “Grexit”. It was floating around towards the end of the last decade when there was talk that Greece might follow the UK in taking the brave decision to leave the European Union. You will have noticed that never happened. Neither did the rumours that Greece might tumble out of the euro – abandoning the single currency in favour of a new drachma – come to anything. Talk of vaults full of freshly printed banknotes ready to enter circulation from Athens to Zante proved false.
Yet this weekend it has emerged that Greece is choosing its own course to avoid the sorts of airport chaos that we have been witnessing at various European locations for the past week. As you may recall, since 10 April, every Schengen area frontier is supposed to be applying the EU entry-exit system in all its biometric glory to British passport holders:
These rules apply to all “third-country nationals”, including Australians, Canadian and Venezuelans. But British travellers to Europe outnumber all of them put together.
I had previously warned that the queues at small Greek island airports might grow alarmingly long. On some days in summer, they can have upwards of 2,000 UK passport holders arriving and departing. The Greek border authorities, like every frontier organisation, want to get people on their way as quickly as possible. But the staffing issues are considerable.
But late on Friday, Eleni Skarveli, the director of the Greek National Tourism Organisation in the UK, revealed that British passport holders are now exempt from biometric registration at Greek border crossing points. She said the move is aimed at “ensuring a smoother and more efficient arrival experience in Greece”.
