British travellers heading to the continent are about to experience one of the biggest shifts in border control in decades. Starting in November, everyone crossing into the Schengen zone by car or coach through Dover will face new biometric checks: fingerprints, photographs and digital records of time spent in the EU.
The change comes as part of a Europe-wide move to scrap the old system of “wet stamping” passports in favour of automated monitoring. But while the European border agency Frontex has already developed a tablet-based app to streamline the process, delays mean the technology will not be ready before late autumn. Until then, every passenger will have to step out of vehicles to complete checks manually, no matter how often they travel.
For the Port of Dover, which handles half of all UK exports to Europe and £144bn of goods annually, the new system presents enormous logistical challenges. The port is squeezed between the English Channel and the iconic white cliffs, with little spare room to process passengers safely. Allowing families to disembark among queues of lorries on stormy nights, as Doug Bannister, Dover’s chief executive, notes, would simply be unsafe.
The solution is nothing short of extraordinary: a “virtual frontier” 1.4 miles inland, spread over 13 hectares of reclaimed land. Here, new facilities will house separate terminals for cars and coaches. Passengers will be checked away from the dangerous flow of 10,000 trucks a day, before rejoining traffic for the short trip to the ferry docks. In the case of buses, doors will even be sealed with tape to preserve border integrity until embarkation. AI and number-plate recognition will track movements to ensure no irregular crossings.
Bannister insists the new regime will not cripple Dover’s famed speed. The port, proud of loading a ferry with 120 trucks, 1,000 passengers and 200 cars in just 45 minutes—“faster than an A320 at Gatwick,” as he puts it—expects the biometric process to add no more than six minutes to car journeys.
Beyond the immediate disruption, officials see opportunities. A thaw in UK-EU relations could remove checks on food exports, re-opening the European market to Britain’s smaller producers. Ending the wasteful practice of lorries returning empty across the Channel would also bring both environmental and economic benefits.
For now, though, travellers should prepare for a different Dover experience. The era of quick passport stamps is ending. Biometric Europe is coming—whether the technology is ready or not.
The port prides itself on the speed with which it operates. Bannister says it can load and off-load a ferry “with 120 trucks, 1,000 passengers and a couple of hundred cars in 45 minutes, faster than an A320 at Gatwick”.
He is confident the biometric check regime being built will add just six minutes to a car journey.
The new regime has presented particular challenges in Dover because the port is hemmed by the cliffs and there is no safe space for car passengers to be checked amid the flow of 10,000 trucks a day crossing the channel.
“In an airport you have a nice, air-conditioned, well-lit hall, and an orderly queue of foot passengers going through. But we needed to cater for a carload of four people on a large, stormy night. So we couldn’t have people exit their vehicles [in the ferry queues]. That would be dangerous.”
In an extraordinary solution supported by the UK and French governments, Dover will create a virtual frontier system, 1.4 miles across town for border checks on 12 hectares of reclaimed land.
Peering down from the western cliffs, the first building to cater for coaches is already in place on a vast swathe of built-up ground currently topped with golden sand.
A second bus and a separate car building will be installed in the coming months.
To ensure the integrity of the border, buses will have their doors physically sealed with tape while they rejoin regular traffic across Dover town and continue a 1.4-mile journey from the western ferry to board the ferry at the eastern docks.
Irregular movements between the biometric border and the ferry board will be monitored by a combination of AI and automatic number plate recognition.
He is also hopeful that the reset in the relationship between the UK and the EU will end the environmentally and economically damaging issue of trucks returning to the continent empty.
With £144bn worth of goods traded over the channel every year, the Port of Dover is of critical economic interest to France and the UK, representing half of the total of UK goods exported to Europe, Bannister said.
The EU and the UK have pledged to negotiate a new deal eliminating the checks on food, which will allow small food and farm producers to export to Europe once again.