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Brexit will really start to bite us in 2024. How ready are you?
Next year, British passport holders travelling to the EU will have their fingerprints taken and their faces scanned – but these are not the only new Brexit ‘freedoms’ we have to look forward to, says Femi Oluwole
If Brexit made us a free country, why are we more locked in than ever?
Nothing says “freedom” like having your face and fingerprints scanned when you go abroad.
From next autumn, UK passport holders entering any of the EU’s 27 member states (except Ireland and Cyprus) and four non-EU countries (Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein) will first need to submit to biometric scanning.
There are always queues when Brits go on holiday – at Dover and Calais, at airport check-ins and arrivals. But they’ve got even longer since Brexit, which requires us to get our passports stamped to enter the EU. In October 2024, that will be replaced with fingerprint scanning and facial recognition at the 443 airports within the Schengen area, an even more involved process.
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