We're piloting new technology based on some artificial intelligence to be able to provide the

security of the vehicle transit from the western docks to the eastern docks.

Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

It's Monday the 7th of April, and that was the voice of Doug Bannister.

He is the chief executive of the Port of Dover, Britain's busiest port, with links to Calais and Dunkirk in France.

It's been very much at the forefront of everyone's minds as the European Union moves towards the entry-exit system,

which is going to demand facial biometrics and fingerprints from every third country national,

and that's you and me, who is travelling out to France.

Unlike most international journeys at Dover, your passport is checked by the Police of Frontier

French border guards as you leave Dover and board your ferry.

That has posed a lot of possible problems for the port because there isn't

frankly much room between the White Cliffs of Dover and the channel. But there is a solution

on its way as I've been hearing from Doug Bannister. We welcomed the delay in the implementation because the implementation design from last year was a big bang across all borders of the European Union.

And the EU has done a great job in looking at a more progressive way to implement the system,

which means that it's not a big bang. It happens over a period of time.

And that is a big relief because that will allow the technology to bet in and all that.

And now for cars, what we're doing is we've changed our processes. Rather than being

reliant on agents with tablets, which was what we were shooting for last year,

what we've done is we've changed our delivery mechanism to kiosk base.

And thankfully, we got approval from the European Union and the French authorities to conduct

the registration process upon newly reclaimed ground in our Western docks.

So over the summertime, well, starting already now,

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