It was something of a rite of passage: Go to a country and get a stamp on your passport. The excitement of “filling your book” with passport stamps before you were due to get a new passport was only dimmed by the need to go through the cost and rigmarole of getting a new passport because you didn’t have more room. And THAT was significantly decreased when the US government started offering passport books with more pages (for a price, of course).
More than just something to look at
Of course, passport stamps have always been more than just something for travelers to collect. They’re an essential and official part of the travel process, as this young couple discovered the hard way a few years ago.
The slow end to passport stamps
Of course, technology continues, so we all knew it would only be a matter of time before passport stamps would become a thing of the past. Case in point, e-passports, with electronic chips, have made passport stamps unnecessary since the “proof” of being in the country with the governments’ (yours and that of the country you’re visiting) knowledge, that a stamp showed, is now electronic.
But the clock just sped up
Until now, countries that adopted e-passports and didn’t offer stamps have been in dribs and drabs: Australia, Singapore, Israel, South Korea, Argentina, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Macau, United Arab Emirates, Japan, and several others, one at a time, here and there.
However, the European Union’s Commissioner for Home Affairs announced in a speech late last week that the EU plans to switch on its new electronic Entry/Exit System (EES) on Sunday, Nov. 10.
Once that happens, it will will end the stamp requirement for most tourists.
“At every single airport, every single harbor, every single road into Europe. We will have digital border controls,” the text of European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson’s speech said. “When that happens, it will be goodbye to passport stamping, hello to digital checks.”
“After intense dialogues with Member States, with you, with the different stakeholders, I have decided that the Entry/Exit System will enter into operations on the 10th of November,” Johansson continued. “Different steps are legally required before the Commission could take the formal decision, but I am proud to reveal today that the 10th of November is the target day.”
Under the new system, visitors from non-EU countries who enter the EU will be electronically registered by having their fingerprints and face scanned digitally upon entry. (Visitors who require a short-stay visa [Note: U.S. citizens do not] will only have their face scanned.) EU officials will then use those biometrics to confirm a visitor’s entry and exit from the union, with no stamp required.
Once the EES is switched on, border officers will cross-reference a person’s biometrics with their passport on the first visit, and that information will remain on file. Tourists’ biometric data will then be verified on entry and exit during future visits.
Visitors to the EU will be able to speed their first arrival at a European border by pre-registering using a mobile app (don’t look for it yet; it’s not available at this time) or the automated kiosks installed at major border entry ports, including, of course, airports.
Of course, you must have a biometric passport for this to happen. The U.S. has been issuing biometric passports (and only biometric passports) since 2007.
Feature Photo (cropped): hkl // flickr // CC BY 2.0
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2 comments
Such a bummer. I loved collecting stamps back in the day.
As it is, so many countries use stickers, which is just no fun at all.
Good riddance to stamps from my side. I fill up an Aussie Passport of 32pp every 18 months. To get a new passport…Australia will charge us $500 for the “privilege”. It’s called a policy of envy. So good riddance to stamps in passports. I just hope those damn Dutch join in too. One goes through the electronic system when transferring to an International flight, but still they insist on stamping your passport by one of the…border officials…
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