TRAVEL completionists may be running out of time to get a European stamp in their passport. If you're hoping to collect them all, you may only have until November. In a Friday speech , Ylva Johansson, the European Union's home affairs commissioner, announced that the E.
U. plans to change its electronic Entry/Exit System (EES) on November 10. The change will effectively remove the stamp requirement for most travelers .
Instead, the E.U. will make the swap to digital instead of physical stamps.
"At every single airport , every single harbor, every single road into Europe. We will have digital border controls,” she said. Read More on Travel “And when that happens, it will be goodbye to passport stamping, hello to digital checks.
” The change, she added, hopes to make the entry and exit process more efficient. "For all passengers from outside the EU, making travel easier, and border checks gradually faster," she said. "Seven hundred million people will be affected by your work because last year, more than 700 million tourists traveled to Europe.
" Most read in Travel Johansson added that the new system will make it easier to identify fake passports and people who have overstayed their visa limits. "We will know if people stay too long, countering irregular migration," she said. "Thanks to biometric identification, photos, and fingerprints, there'll be an immediate warning: this person is not who he says he is.
" With the changes, visitors will have their fingerprints and face scanned digitally upon entry to the E.U. While American visitors do not require a short-stay visa to enter the E.
U., those who do will only have their faces scanned. The same biometrics will be used when a traveler exits the union.
The digital entries will also remain in the database for any future visits. Travelers will be required to have a biometric passport to visit the E.U.
The U.S. State Department has exclusively issued biometric passports since 2007.
Travelers can check to see if their passports meet the requirements by looking for two rectangles with a circle in the center of their cover. Read More on The US Sun Upon visitation to the E.U.
, those without a biometric passport will have to go through extensive processing at the border. They will also not be eligible to use self-service passport control kiosks..
