The introduction of ETIAS will have the greatest impact on British travellers, because we are the most frequent visitors to the Schengen Zone. And it has come about because, although the last UK government negotiated post-Brexit “visa-free” visits for holidaymakers from this country, it also insisted that we were treated like all other third countries as far as the EU was concerned. This also restricts the amount of time British tourists can stay in the EU to three months in any six.
The pass, which must be applied for online and will cost €7 (£5.90), will be valid for three years and will be issued pretty much automatically. Applicants will also have to upload fingerprints and other biometric data to a European-wide computer system so that they can use the new e-gates at Schengen borders which are due to come into operation this November. Our full guide to the new systems is here.
Open champions
In its latest report, Henley identifies 13 “completely open” countries – those that offer visa-free or visa-on-arrival entry to all 198 passports in the world (not counting their own). These are Burundi, Cape Verde Islands, Comoro Islands, Djibouti, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Maldives, Micronesia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Samoa, Timor-Leste and Tuvalu. At the other end of the spectrum, three countries score zero on the index, permitting no visa-free access for any passport: Afghanistan, North Korea and Turkmenistan.
Another interesting measure is those countries with the greatest disparity between the travel freedoms their citizens enjoy compared with what they offer to visitors from other nations. This is particularly stark in the case of the US. While American passport holders can access 188 destinations visa-free, the US itself allows only 41 other nationalities to pass through its borders on the same basis. The other countries with the biggest disparities of this kind are Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Japan.