# Entry by Europeans prior to UK joining the EU?



## Willuth

Now that the UK is no longer a member of the EU, Europeans are no longer able to travel here via an ID card – a passport is required. Yet most of my EU friends no longer hold passports – unless they are venturing to the USA and so on, their needs are met with an ID. This new requirement will adversely affect tourism to the UK and, for most people, any idea of “popping over to London for a long weekend” is now out of the question.

But what I cannot remember is this: how were things before the UK joined the EU? At that time most European citizens were obliged to hold ID cards but were they entitled to use these when travelling around Europe and also to the UK?

Also, are EU ID cards accepted in lieu of passports by other countries – perhaps Turkey, Tunisia and so on?

W


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## EuroTrash

I am pretty sure ID cards used to be accepted. I used to go on French school exchange visits, we Brit kids had big posh clunky new passports and the French kids had well used bits of cardboard in their pockets, it made them seem so much more cosmopolitan and modern somehow.
But it's a different world now isn't it. International terrorism etc wasn't so much of a thing back then, there weren't passport scanners etc.
That's what I often think when people seem to expect the post Brexit situation to simply revert to the pre-EU membership days. It can't, because the world is a different place.
.


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## Bevdeforges

Actually, if you look up the history of the Schengen Agreement, there are some interesting tidbits - like that the Schengen Agreement was set up in 1985 to abolish internal border controls between 5 of the (at that time) 10 EEC member states - with plans to "eventually" eliminate internal border controls throughout the EU. But initially the Schengen Agreement was operated separately from the EEC or EU. It wasn't until 1990 that they signed the Schengen Convention (which proposed a common visa policy for the area) and then it wasn't until 1999 that the Schengen Convention was incorporated into EU law - exempting only the UK and Ireland. So it had nothing to do with the UK being part of the EU or not.

I remember when I worked in the UK - back around 1990, it was still necessary for Americans to obtain a visa to enter France even just for the short term. And then how "nifty" it was when the UK announced (and I have no recollection exactly when this was) that people from the EU (or at least from France) could enter the UK on "merely" their national i.d. cards, which also included a French carte de séjour. So apparently it was a gesture on the part of the UK and not anything having to do with Schengen or the EU. I'm also not aware of when that policy changed back.


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## Poloss

Willuth said:


> But what I cannot remember is this: how were things before the UK joined the EU? At that time most European citizens were obliged to hold ID cards but were they entitled to use these when travelling around Europe and also to the UK?


I was already living in France for several years before the UK became a full member of the EU in 1987/8.
At that time it was imperative to possess a valid passport to cross frontiers
for French, Spanish, Italian, West German, Swiss & UK citizens. 
Especially for hitch-hikers doing border crossings on foot!
There were always two controls: customs and police.

Stays were limited to 3 months.
Maybe there was a free travel agreement in the Benelux
but as far as I remember, nobody traveled (officially) with a simple national ID card.

In the '80s/early '90s there was a possibility in the UK to get an instant temporary passport (valid 12 months) from the Post Office on Piccadilly or Trafalgar Sq.
At that time t was far easier to get a full new UK passport from the consulate in Lyon than from the main London passport office.


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## EuroTrash

And yet... My penfriend's family was in northern France very close to the Belgian border. While I was there my penfriend and her brothers and I (all teenagers) would cross the border into Belgium frequently - for one thing, because Belgium had better nightclubs - and none of them had passports, only French ID cards. I of course took my big stiff cardboard passport. Our papers weren't always checked but sometimes they were. This.was in early 70s.
I think perhaps it varied place to place, as these things do.


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## Lydi

My experience is similar to ET's ...

Though the sad thing with this passport lark is that it puts paid to the vast majority of school trips from the EU to the UK. 
I organised loads during my career - even from here in the Limousin. It was always a real motivation - something the kids looked forward to and they always enjoyed themselves, but with the extra cost (and hassle) of getting a passport (the ID card is free) the price of the trip becomes prohibitive for a lot of families.


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## conky2

Poloss said:


> In the '80s/early '90s there was a possibility in the UK to get an instant temporary passport (valid 12 months) from the Post Office on Piccadilly or Trafalgar Sq.



You could get the one year visitors passport from any main post office in England at least. I believe that they were only valid in Europe and I obtained my first one in 1973. They were issued from 1961 until 1995.


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## Lydi

I seem to remember collecting my first visitor's passport from the _labour exchange_ in 1968.
Is my memory deceiving me?


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## Willuth

Lydi said:


> My experience is similar to ET's ...
> 
> Though the sad thing with this passport lark is that it puts paid to the vast majority of school trips from the EU to the UK.
> I organised loads during my career - even from here in the Limousin. It was always a real motivation - something the kids looked forward to and they always enjoyed themselves, but with the extra cost (and hassle) of getting a passport (the ID card is free) the price of the trip becomes prohibitive for a lot of families.


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## Willuth

Yes, this is a great pity and will certainly rule out school trips to the UK.
And it's the same across the whole tourism sector - 'spur-of-the moment-trips' will be a goner.
Ireland will benefit.
During Covid the whole tourism sector got more or less shut down.
But when (hopefully 'when'!) tourism gets back in its stride the UK will lose out badly because of this insistence on full-blown passports.
Is there pressure from the UK travel sector for this passport insistence to be relaxed?
W


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