Tenerife Brexit chaos sees Brits stuck in huge passport queues

14 November 2023 , 10:31

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British passport holders have encountered queues at Tenerife Airport since the UK left the EU (Image: AFP via Getty Images)

Brits going on holiday to Tenerife are being warned of "chaos" at the south airport partly caused by Brexit.

Irked tourism leaders on the island say the passport control at the busy Tenerife Sur is "nonsense" and want urgent action to prevent one-hour queues to get through passport control. The holiday bosses claim that the situation has been going on for months and is affecting hundreds of thousands of Brits.

Huge numbers of Brits fly to the island every year, with the UK remaining Tenerife's biggest tourism market despite the increased friction at the border.

"Tenerife airport, the UK passport queues mile long to get through. Thankfully we both have Irish passports and the only ones in the EU passport queue, sailed through. We are still waiting at the gate to get on the flight back to Gatwick though," one happy European recently Tweeted.

Photos from the airport show that the queue for EU citizens is often very small or non-existent, while the line for those with British passports only often stretches back many metres. The same phenomenon has occurred at other airports popular with Brits, such as Malaga.

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Hoteliers warn the waiting times are just as bad at the taxi ranks at the airport where new arrivals also have to queue at peak times. The concerns have been raised by Ashotel, the hospitality association of Tenerife and the other Canary islands of La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro.

Ashotel says it has been chaos at the Tenerife South airport for months following the UK's departure from the EU, which led to stricter passport controls set up for citizens coming from the UK. The airport now has a modern second terminal, but tourism bosses have complained that the queues at passport controls and for taxis does not correspond to the otherwise first-class infrastructure.

Vice president of Ashotel, Victoria López said it was “nonsense” that this blockage occurs in the control for passengers who come from non-EU territory, as is the case for those from the UK.

“This collapse in control is not an extraordinary one-off situation, when the flights are scheduled and it is known well in advance when they will arrive. This information would allow for reinforcements of personnel if necessary," he said.

In the coming years the process of travelling from the UK to EU countries is due to change again, having already been altered following Brexit. Soon tourists returning from Europe will no longer have their travel documents stamped, as British passport holders have had to since the UK left the EU.

The new process - which is designed to measure and control how long people from third countries, such as the UK, are allowed to stay in the Schengen Zone - is a move towards check-point digitisation, and has been dubbed Entry/Exit System (EES).

It includes the installation of passport-reading machines at external points of the Schengen Area that will replace manual passport stamping. Travellers will need to scan their passports or other travel documents at an automated self-service kiosk prior to crossing the border.

European Commission’s department for Migration and Home Affairs said: "EES will replace the current system of manual stamping of passports, which is time consuming, does not provide reliable data on border crossings and does not allow a systematic detection of overstayers."

The system will log the following information for every traveller:

Facial image
Surname or family name
First name or given names
Date and place of birth
Nationality or nationalities
Gender
Passport number, date and country of issuance as well as the expiry date
Valid ETIAS or Schengen visa along with its duration and/or validity
Travel information including the visitor’s points and dates of entries and exits, as well as overstays within the Schengen Zone
Fingerprints

The 27 Schengen countries where the new rules apply include Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.