Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling.

What was that odd introduction? I am so sorry, everybody, that was me blowing my own trumpet.

Only because I'm just finally feeling really quite exhausted and possibly vindicated by the fact that this afternoon, the Foreign Office finally came

round to my way of thinking on the thorny subject of passport validity for British

travellers to Europe. This of course is a child of Brexit and it became pretty clear once the

transition period was over that things would change very substantially

for British travellers to Europe. That really came into effect in January 2021. Of course, when we were

deep into the COVID pandemic. So that kind of camouflaged the problems,

but it was pretty clear to me that there would be an almighty problem

when people started travelling to Europe again.

I thought it would mostly involve people not being officially allowed to because their passport had expired or it didn't have the required three months on the day that you intend to leave.

But no, the problem was pretty much of the making of the government abetted by the travel industry.

Let me just stress what the actual rules are for any British passport holder going to the EU.

You've possibly heard me say this a million times before.

But on the day that you intend to travel out to the European Union, your passport must not have had its 10th birthday.

In other words, have a look at the issue date, see if it was issued less than 10 years ago.

If that applies on the day you want to enter the EU, that's absolutely fine, so long as you meet the other test,

which is the expiry date must be at least three months after the day you intend to leave

the European Union. That actually gives you a fair amount of leeway. Unfortunately, the UK government and many travel companies said,

oh no, that's not the rule at all. Initially, the UK government said, oh yeah, well, it's 10 years

minus six months, so therefore nine years, six months. Of course, that was absolutely stupid and ridiculous and I got

them to stop that. But even though six months ago, I wrote to the foreign office and to all the

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