Bungling Brexit governments sowed passport confusion that lingers today

Independent

10-04-2025

The post- Brexit rules for British passport holders to Europe took effect at the start of 2021. The UK surrendered the right to use passports in the European Union up to the date of expiry. Instead, ministers negotiated for us to become 'third country nationals' along with the good people of El Salvador and Samoa.
To enter the European Union and wider Schengen area (including Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) your passport must meet two conditions.
One is about the issue date, the other about the expiry date.
The passport must be less than 10 years old on the day of entry to the EU.
On the intended day of leaving the EU, at least three months' validity must remain.
These conditions are independent of each other. So you can use a British passport to travel out to the EU up to the day before its 10th birthday, as long as it has at least three months before expiry. This is handy, because millions of people have UK passports issued for longer than 10 years.
In the years from 2001 to 2018, any 'unspent' months from a previous passport were added upon renewal, up to 10 years and nine months. This traveller-friendly policy had been irrelevant while the UK was a member of the EU. But once outside of the club, we have to respect their rules. And unlike the rest of the world, the Schengen area does not want anyone to come in with a passport that is over 10 years old.
To make absolutely clear that it is fine for your passport to have its 10th birthday abroad, the European Commission puts a handy example in the Practical Handbook for Border Guards.
'A third country traveller arrives on 21 November 2022 for a 20 days stay in the EU with a passport issued on 23 November 2012 and valid until 23 March 2023. The entry condition ... of the Schengen Borders Code is fulfilled, since at the day of arrival the issuance date was less than 10 years ago and the validity extends beyond three months after the intended date of departure.'
Yet four years after this pair of rules began to apply to British citizens, every week I still hear cases of passengers being wrongly turned away at airports – or, this week, a seaport – because the staff whose job it is to check travel documentation invent rules that have never existed.
How on earth did the travel industry get itself in the position of needlessly ruining customers' holidays, and subsequently paying out compensation for its shortcomings? I have been tracking through the history of post-Brexit bureaucratic bungling.
Poorly drafted European rules
The Schengen Border Code for third-country nationals says a passport 'must have been issued within the previous 10 years' and its validity 'must extend at least three months after the intended date of departure from the Schengen States'.
Because it was not made absolutely explicit that these two rules are independent of each other, the ambiguity allowed a seed to doubt to emerge: did Brussels somehow mean that a passport ceased to be valid in the eyes of the Europeans on its 10th birthday, and you had to subtract three months from that?
The UK government could have quickly closed down any such speculation by checking with the Department of Migration and Home Affairs. Indeed, since the UK was a party to drafting the Schengen Border Code, civil servants could have checked their notes about how the rules were interpreted.
Astonishingly, though, instead of understanding the policy of Brussels, the British government started sprouting misinformation.
'Make sure your passport is no older than 9 years and 6 months'
As the Brexit shambles staggered on under Theresa May's government, officials chose to alarm travellers rather than picking up the phone to Brussels and asking. In an extraordinary post, the government said: 'Make sure your passport is no older than 9 years and 6 months on the day of travel. For example, if you're planning to travel to the Schengen area on 30 March 2019, your passport should have an issue date on or after 1 October 2009. This is to avoid any possibility of your adult British passport not complying with the Schengen Border Code.'
Even if Brexit had happened without a deal, all of this was still nonsense. UK passport holders would have become third-country nationals a little earlier and the current rules would apply.
Oven-ready confusion
Once Boris Johnson took over as prime minister, his 'oven-ready' Brexit deal ensured that any hope of more favourable treatment for British travellers was extinguished. We were to become third-country nationals, subject to the 10 year/three months conditions – as well as having stays limited to a maximum of 90 days in any 180 days. Now that's what I call 'taking back control'.
Until the end of 2020, though, UK passport holders could theoretically come and go from Europe with passports that were valid up to and including the expiry date – subject to the constantly changing tangle of Covid travel restrictions.
In preparation for finally leaving the EU, the government managed to put out two different versions of the Schengen area rules – both of which were wrong.
One claimed: 'On the day you travel, you'll need your passport to … have at least six months left."
The other version was contained in a completely useless online passport checker, which deemed all UK passports to expire after 10 years.
Amid the chaos, in December 2020 I began working with the European Commission to ensure that the rules from January 2021 were crystal clear to all.
'Holidays are illegal'
That was the government refrain for the first 19 weeks of 2021, which meant issues of passport validity were moot. Once the brakes were off, it would be essential that everyone – travellers, airlines and holiday companies – knew what the post-Brexit world meant. I sent all my correspondence with Brussels, confirm the current rules, to all the big airlines and holiday companies, as well as the UK government.
The 'six months' fiction continues.
Lockdown did not end well for some passengers. The government continuing to insist, against all the evidence: 'You need to have at least six months remaining'. Angela and Robert Kennedy from West Yorkshire were the first victims of the government issuing incorrect advice who sought my help. They were turned away from Leeds Bradford airport by Jet2. To the company's considerable credit, when I intervened Jet2 changed its policy, apologised to the couple and flew them out to Ibiza on a rearranged holiday a couple of days later.
British Airways and Wizz Air, too, agreed with my interpretation of the rules and – with rare exceptions – both have faithfully applied the Brussels doctrine.
Unfortunately, the UK government maintained that there was an element of confusion in the rules. The two biggest budget airlines, easyJet and Ryanair, went along with this fiction. To liven things up still further, the government's online passport checker (or the people who programmed it) really went off on one, creating a rule that nobody had even considered before: that children's passports expired after exactly five months. It was taken offline after The Independent made representations.
Coming into line
In April 2022 both the Foreign Office and easyJet conceded they had been, respectively, spreading fake news and wrongly denying boarding. Official travel advice finally aligned with the Schengen area rules, and Britain's biggest budget airline started paying compensation to passengers it had wrongly turned away.
A child's passport was the issue that finally persuaded Ryanair to accept the Schengen area rules. In May 2022 the Schoneville family from Motherwell were turned away at Prestwick airport from a flight to Tenerife because Ryanair insisted 15-year-old Zak's passport was ineligible.
'Under current EU rules which apply, a child's passport must be no more than five years old on the date of travel, and he was correctly denied boarding,' the airline said. The Independent ran the story, but with a note that there was no such rule – and that Ryanair had been told the statement was wrong.
The family later flew to Tenerife with Jet2. Within days, Europe's biggest budget airline had come into line.
But we're three years on …?
Four years, if you count from when the rules first took effect. Yet still staff working for airlines and ferry firms continue wrongly to turn passengers away.
Why? Poor training plus a misplaced abundance of caution. Airlines get fined if they allow on board a passenger who is not eligible for the destination. If the staff member checking documentation has been relying on random internet 'information' such as 'think of your passport as being valid for nine years and nine months,' they may decide they know best.
A particularly worrying aspect in many cases that I deal with is that a series of people working for the travel firm may make the same mistaken judgment – and often when the innocent victim complains after the event, airlines often double-down on their mistake.
A traveller who falls foul of this practice may conclude that he or she is wrong and give up seeking compensation for a wrecked trip.
At least the Schengen area knows what the rules are, eh?
Sadly not. The Independent is currently investigating a case in which Norwegian police at Oslo airport wrongly deported a British holidaymaker because border staff applied the wrong rules. So far I have contacted the Norwegian Embassy (six times) and a string of ministries and police control centres without success.
When will this miserable saga end?
The last British passport issued for more than 10 years was in September 2018. By the same month in 2028, no UK passport holder will be eligible to visit the Schengen area on a document issued with validity of over 10 years – though British passports will continue to be valid for admission to nations such as Australia and the US until their expiry date.