Theo LeggettTransport Correspondent
Reuters
British holidaymakers heading to Greece will not have to face any delays at the border, even at the height of summer, the country’s tourism minister has told the BBC.
Olga Kefalogianni said the Greek government did not want visitors to be “burdened” by bureaucratic procedures when entering or leaving the country.
She confirmed British visitors will not face biometric checks at the border at any time during the summer season.
The country is making efforts to ensure frontier checks take “less than a couple of minutes”, she added.
The EU in April completed the introduction of its controversial new digital border procedure, known as the “entry-exit system”, or EES.
It requires short term visitors from outside the EU and the European Economic Area to register biometric data each time they enter or leave the Schengen free travel zone.
The first time they cross the border, this is meant to include fingerprints and a facial scan – with one of those being checked each time they go through passport control.
Although the system is working well in some parts of the EU, there have been serious difficulties in others, with some passengers experiencing queues of up to three hours.
Greece insists it has “successfully started the full operation of the Entry-Exit System”. But in practice, it suspended biometric checks on UK visitors in early April after long queues built up at Corfu airport.
Kefalogianni insisted Greece was not breaching EU rules, which currently allow EES checks to be suspended briefly when airports become very congested, but prohibit blanket exemptions for citizens of a particular country.
“What we’re doing is not actually an exemption,” she said. “It’s just that we have made sure that we facilitate the procedure in a way that means visitors are not burdened”.
The EU last week said it was in contact with Greece “to clarify the situation and recall the existing rules”.
Since the US-Israel war with Iran erupted more than two months ago, jet fuel supplies from the Gulf have slowed to a trickle – a particular problem for Europe, which normally relies heavily on imports from the region.
“I think that this is a trend that you would see everywhere” she said. “People are being much more reluctant.
“But at the same time, they realise that Greece is always a country which has upgraded its tourism offering and that it provides a very good balance when it comes to price and the offering.
“We already have a lot of holidaymakers in Greece right now, and we’re looking forward to welcoming even more as the season evolves”, she added.
