ETOA Webinar | Europe’s border formalities in 2023

Tourism depends on hassle-free formalities: Europe needs open borders to maintain freedom of movement and trade. What are Europe’s upcoming new border formalities for visitors, and how will they work?

2023 is expected to see the introduction of the EU’s pre-clearance system ETIAS applicable to citizens of countries with a visa-waiver status to visit the Schengen Area or Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Romania.

Prior to ETIAS, EES will be implemented – a new electronic border protocol applicable to citizens of countries not in the EU or EFTA, both visa requiring and visa-waiver, to visit the Schengen Area or Bulgaria and Romania. While free for the person travelling, EES will require the collection of biometric data and passports will no longer be manually stamped.

The UK is expected to introduce a similar scheme to ETIAS which will apply to international visitors of visa waiver status who are not British or Irish citizens, or potentially other nationalities resident in Ireland.

For those needing visas, processing is proving problematic. ETOA has recently carried out a survey focusing on Europe’s Asian source markets: satisfaction levels suggest that investment in consular services has fallen.

This ETOA webinar covers the developments above in more detail, and shares key findings from the visa processing survey (accessible via the link below).

Download – Visa processing Survey 2022 – Initial findings

Panellists: 

• Tim Fairhurst, Director of Policy, ETOA
• Simon Smith, Policy Manager, ETOA
• Marie-Eve Albertelli, Senior Project Manager in Border Control Facilitation, Groupe ADP

To stay up to date on visa and border formalities, make sure to check our page: https://www.etoa.org/policy/visas-and-borders/