IS it fully operational at Santander or hit and miss as to if you get caught with it
the latter based on a report on a Fb touring group recently
it stated that some people in cars were being routed to EES booths but the bikes had the normal passport thing
my theory is that it might vary depending on where you sail from. If you are on an eflexer boat from Portsmouth bikes are often first off and they might check a few people to get a quota in. If you are on the Pont Aven from Plymouth when 200 bikes suddenly emerge from the dungeon then they will wave you through normal passport control as they want to get you cleared out of the way to start checking in the people going back to Plymouth.
Supposedly they have leeway to manage the queues this way until October when they are supposed to do biometric scans for 100% of passengers.
There's a lot of advocacy to modify the system from travel operators. This was on the BBC yesterday morning:
"Ferry operator Brittany Ferries has also raised concerns about the impact of the new checks, saying the rollout has been poorly timed ahead of the busy summer season. Chief executive Christophe Mathieu told
BBC Radio 4 that the system was already increasing journey times significantly. He said the company had suggested carrying out biometric checks onboard ferries to ease pressure at ports, but the proposal had yet to be adopted."
I guess in the autumn we will get a breakdown of the figures about how many people went to Tunisia, Turkey and Montenegro instead of the Schengen shitshow. It will only be an economic impact on tourism, and potential loss of votes, that will get politicians to force the bureaucrats to change things.
sticker.
