April 12th - A reminder on passport rules. Again.
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 12 April 2023
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Passports all over again. For travel with a British passport to the European Union, there are two – and only two – conditions:
On the day of departure to the EU, less than 10 years since the issue date (all kids’ passports meet this test)
On the intended day of return from the EU, at least 3 months until the expiry date.
That’s all. Can everyone stop putting out misinformation, please?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. I'm back in my |
| 0:07.8 | happy place, which, as you might be able to hear from the gentle rumble of people behind me, |
| 0:13.3 | is Waterloo Station, the busiest in the UK, and as it's a Wednesday evening rush hour actually looking pretty busy is worth noting |
| 0:24.6 | that Fridays are effectively the first day of a three-day weekend from the point of view of an |
| 0:31.2 | awful lot of commuters these days and it's well worth bearing that in mind it's there's talk that transport for |
| 0:39.0 | London might even make it off-peak all day Virgin Trains successor at Vanti |
| 0:45.9 | West Coast has already said that effectively Fridays are off-peak all day |
| 0:51.1 | anyway that's what I'm talking about today. I'm talking entirely about a subject |
| 0:56.0 | which has been exercising an awful lot of people, which is passports and the rules for Europe. |
| 1:02.7 | And I can barely believe that I have to repeat again the rules. I'm perfectly happy to do this. |
| 1:10.0 | But so far today, I've met three people who have missed their holidays |
| 1:15.6 | because they were not aware of the rules for Europe. |
| 1:18.6 | I then retweeted what the rules for Europe are |
| 1:23.6 | and ever since then there has been a blizzard of misinformation so please trust me on this |
| 1:32.5 | as opposed to many other subjects i do know what i'm talking about i did manage last year to convince |
| 1:40.1 | all the airlines including easyjet and and Ryanair and eventually the British government |
| 1:45.7 | what the rules are for travel with to Europe and they all agreed with me so I hope |
| 1:51.1 | you will too and this is particularly important because of the HM passport office |
| 1:57.1 | strike involving staff from the who belong to the PCS union going on strike there on day |
| 2:04.4 | 10 of a five week strike loads of people are applying for renewals unnecessarily and I'll come |
| 2:10.7 | on to some of the typical information that I'm seeing to explain that but let me just explain |
| 2:17.1 | the rules as they actually are. On the day of |
... |
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