Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. Today I'm going to be

talking about what may and what may not happen in terms of travel to Europe. You may be aware,

because it's been in the independent and elsewhere elsewhere that apparently Rishi Sunak is looking to

the European Union to reduce the stress, the friction involved in passport checks.

And I have spent quite a lot of time since the democratic vote to leave the European Union, working

out what the implications are, and I wanted to give you my take.

There seems to be some surprise among people, whether they're Brexiteers or not, about the

impact of Brexit on our travel plans.

Well, I'm really surprised about that because most of it is entirely foreseeable.

We said to Europe, we insist on being so-called third country nationals.

We want to be treated exactly the same way as people

from Tonga and Venezuela and other faraway lands. We don't want any special relationship with

Europe, no thank you. And therefore, we need to have our passports all checked very carefully so that we're fully aware of any

issues in terms of overstaying because of course we also signed up for the 90 days in any 180 day

rule which means if you've got a second home abroad well if you've decided to go

from October to Christmas you'd then need to clear off until around about the

spring equinox so we also said we want to have our passport stamped and

therefore we will also as soon as the entry exit system is finally ready, we will want to have

fingerprinting and facial biometrics done as well, please.

That's what we ask for.

That is what Europe is delivering because it has to.

There is no magic way of waving people through the border as they used to. In the days

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