There has been a fair amount of talk about this biometric stuff in relation to the fiasco at the Channel crossings recently. The new system will only make that worse, especially as people would almost certainly have to get out of their vehicles to use the "new" e-gates. Apparently, the Port of Dover and the Channel Tunnel did ask for government funding to get the facilities built and ready but were told they could only have £33,000. Eurotunnel said they just don't have room on their site and would need to expand. Of coures, that would probably need a lengthy planning process and lead to all sorts of objections and so on. When it's quiet, if you listen carefully, you can hear the fluttering of all those chickens coming home to roost....

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

i haved a feeling this thing will never be introduced.
you cannot have this system with each country applying their own set of rules regarding convictions.
I dread to think how much money they have wasted on it so far.

I'm no expert on the EU, but I've known enough bureaucrats in my time to understand how they think. This hasn't been a waste of time and money. Oh, no! It's been the very valuable practical phase of a feasibility study, and well worth every single euro of somebody else's money.


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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

i can't see it being introduced just prior to a xmas period either, which november 2023 would be.
you would think they would start the process during a quieter period....
common sense and all that...

Come on - there is no room for commonsense in any bureaucracy!

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

I have been spending months worrying about the impact of Brexit, i have a couple of trips to EU planned in 2023, hopefully all before the etias begin. If anyone has any answers or opinions to my questions, i would be grateful.

1 - My conviction will become spent in January 2023 (i had a sexual conviction - a 3 year community order and 5 years on SOR). I know that UK law means i now do not have to declare my conviction in the UK for jobs, insurance etc. after January 2023 so surely the UK police would not be able to  share my details with EU countries unless i commit an offence abroad. Surely if they did, they break the terms of the rehabilitation of offenders act? 

2 - Has anyone on SOR travelled this year since the Schengen alert system has ended (meaning i assume the alerts don't appear at EU borders now) and have they been questioned? i understand some may have green notices against them but some low risk may not have. i know that i have never had a green notice set on me when travelling abroad but have been stopped due to the SIS alerts in EU countries, the last time was in 2019 when it was still used.  

3 - The last time i travelled to the EU was September 2019 and was stopped with the SIS Alert. Does anyone know how long these alerts stay on systems? i did read somewhere that they all had to be deleted due to Brexit. This is another reason i am not travelling abroad until my conviction becomes spent.

Any opinions or even facts would be appreciated.

Provided that you are not on the SOR, and are no longer required to notify police of your foreign travel, then there should not be any problems in Europe.

The Schengen system, does not record dates of entry or exit, and all previous alerts should have been removed by now. The police were in the process of removing them, in late 2019, ready for Brexit in Jan 2020.

I'd like to add my experience of a recent trip to Europe on the SOR, in case it's of use to anybody.

And the experience was... brilliant. Entering the country, my passport was scanned, stamped and I was waved in with a smile. Leaving a week later, which is the point when there used to be a long scrutiny of hidden monitor screens on pre-Brexit trips, my passport was briefly scanned and I was again ushered through with a smile. The biggest surprise of all was when I got back to the UK and had to go through passport control there. I've *always* been asked a list of questions at this point, and my passport has clearly flagged up some kind of notice. This time: scan, smile, wave. Done.

I'd never seriously thought the police would use an Interpol Green Notice on me post-Schengen, but before booking this holiday I did wonder if they'd use one of these mysterious 'diffusions', or if there was some other tagging system in place, which was a bit of a low-level worry. Apparently not!

Obviously other people's mileage may vary. For the record mine was a download offence only, and I assume I am low risk - I've never dared ask, but my PPU only visits once a year these days. It probably didn't hurt that I was travelling with my partner, too.

Anyway, obviously this was a very encouraging experience, and I hope it reassures anyone else who might be uneasy about taking a trip to Europe.

I think we're mostly worried about when the visa waiver scheme starts. With the rules as currently published, it will kibosh most European travel unless you apply for a full visa if you answer the questions truthfully.

As the EU no longer has access to the UK's criminal records system, whether you disclose is up to you, especially if you haven't travelled to the EU since you were convicted or while you were on the SOR. If you are currently on the SOR, it is possible for the police to notify the destination country, but I'd hope they would be more realistic than disclosing just because they can.


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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)