French police have suspended new EU border checks following long delays at the Port of Dover as drivers queued in sweltering heat.
More than 18,000 travellers were expected to arrive at the port through Friday and Saturday for the bank holiday getaway.
Authorities warned of delays of several hours, with queues reported for all ferry operators and at the check-in plaza for tourist traffic at the Kent port.
While processing times are down to 50 minutes at the port’s buffer zone as of midday Saturday, congestion on surrounding roads means drivers face a two-hour queue to access the port, equating to a total wait of nearly three hours.
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However, passengers and motorists will be spared the additional checks after Police Aux Frontieres suspended the EU’s entry and exit system (EES) in a bid to cut wait times at the border.
In a post on X, the port said: ‘We are pleased that Police Aux Frontieres (PAF) have responded positively by invoking the Article 9 clause of the EES regulations.
‘While conventional border checks will still be undertaken, this will now enable PAF to significantly reduce the border processing time.’
The decision means travellers will be processed normally and will not have to provide fingerprints and facial biometrics.
At both the Port of Dover and the Le Shuttle terminal in Folkestone passengers and drivers pass through juxtaposed controls, allowing them to notionally clear the French border before they cross the Channel.
Under the new Entry and Exit system, third-country nationals are now required to register their passport at their first point of arrival into the Schengen area.
However, unlike at dozens of Schengen airports, EES self-registration machines are not yet operational in the UK.
Travel expert Simon Calder told Sky News that Police Aux Frontieres had attempted to register passengers manually using 11 checkpoints.
But they have now reverted to traditional ‘wet-stamping’ of passports in a bid to ease queues, which were building yesterday and this morning.
The tropical heatwave is adding to the travellers’ misery as motorists waited to board ferries to the continent, with temperatures hovering at just under 30°C in Dover.
It comes as around 3.4 million journeys are expected to be undertaken on Sunday, with a further 3.1 million trips on bank holiday Monday.
According to the RAC, six in ten drivers were not planning a leisure trip over the weekend, with just five per cent citing rising fuel costs as a result of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s oil chokepoint.
It added the worst affected roads for congestion were likely to be the M1, M25, M5, M6, with anticlockwise journeys on the London orbital motorway expected to take twice as long as on an average weekend.
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