Conservative MP Sir Roger Gale says the EU's new Entry/Exit System is causing dangerous traffic jams at Dover and Folkestone, threatening lives and prompting calls for a pause to the rollout.
British tourists face the prospect of dying in 12‑hour traffic jams on the Kent side of the Channel unless the European Union halts the roll‑out of its new post‑Brexit border regime, warned Conservative MP Sir Roger Gale, who represents Herne Bay and Sandwich.
Gale told the Times that the backlog of vehicles caused by the EU's Entry/Exit System (EES) could prevent ambulances from reaching people in medical distress. He painted a grim picture of elderly passengers, children, and even pets trapped for half a day without toilets, drinking water or basic medical aid.
'Someone will die, someone will have a heart attack,' he said, adding that the additional French officers promised by the government would not be enough to clear the bottleneck. The EES, which became fully operational in April, requires non‑EU citizens to submit biometric data - a facial photograph and fingerprints - before they are allowed to travel within the Schengen area.
For air passengers the check is normally performed at automated kiosks after landing, but at the Dover and Folkestone ferry terminals the verification takes place on the British side of the channel. The resulting queues of cars and trailers have already begun to spill over into the surrounding countryside. Last month Doug Bannister, chief executive of the Port of Dover, warned that summer could bring 'severe congestion' with an estimated 12,000 vehicles a day queuing for clearance.
Gale's alarmism is echoed by transport officials who have modelled worst‑case scenarios in which delays stretch to twelve hours, although later revisions reduced the estimate to between six and eight hours. Even short‑term mitigations have proved fragile: during the May bank holiday French police temporarily suspended extra checks in Dover after queues reached four and a half hours, and the Department for Transport has earmarked the Lydden Hill Race Circuit, a rallycross track near the port, as a contingency holding area for overflow traffic.
The controversy surrounding the EES extends beyond the UK. British travellers were left stranded in Italy in April when a three‑hour queue prevented roughly one hundred passengers on an EasyJet flight from Milan Linate from boarding a connection to Manchester. Greece, Portugal and Italy have all tried to secure exemptions for UK citizens this summer, but Brussels has so far rejected those requests, insisting that the system applies uniformly to all non‑EU nationals.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander stressed that the government is working closely with French authorities to minimise disruption, praising the extra French border guards and the deployment of additional traffic marshals. Yet Gale remains unconvinced, urging the EU to pause the system, perfect the underlying technology, and introduce it gradually rather than imposing it in full on a busy summer travel season. He concluded, 'I don't want this to happen.
Put the system on ice, get the technology right, make it work and then introduce it properly.
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