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

It's Thursday the 22nd of February.

And that's the day when another six countries became subject to the electronic travel

authorisation scheme that the UK is bringing in. And I want to talk more about this. I touched on

it yesterday when speaking to Thomas Vold by the chief executive of Heathrow Airport. He's very

concerned about one aspect of it, but there's also a lot of misunderstanding about what's happening,

why and when it is all going to take effect.

Let's start at the very beginning and I really carbon date these online authorisation systems

to the rollout of the Ester scheme, the electronic system for travel authorisation, which took effect in 2009.

That was a direct response to the tragic events of 9-11.

In 2001, the perpetrators of the dreadful terrorist attacks were all legally admitted into the United States.

The authorities wanted to avoid any repeat of that.

And that's why, even to this day, you get very difficult questions on the Esther form

about what sort of affiliations you may have, about whether you've been to a country

which is a so-called state sponsor of terrorism, which includes Cuba, but only if you've been

there since January 2021. And of course, you have to pay for the fee. The UK is following a similar path and increasingly many countries

seek to pre-screen visitors on arrival from abroad. The idea is the more you know about me

before I come to your country, the more you can decide, actually, do we want him there? I'm not really sure.

The more questions you can ask. And when I do arrive, if I am seen as a person who is not

undesirable, then the idea is it should be smoother and swifter. And that's certainly the

line that Europe is pushing for its much delayed european

travel information and authorization system which is coming into effect we think next year the

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