Travel Regulation Updates: Europe - 2024/2025

ETIAS EES & Other Travel Changes

[00:00:00] Narrator: Do you dream about your next trip? You're in the right place. On the Time to Talk Travel Podcast, we come to you weekly to share places to go and what to do when you get there. Let's dive into this week's adventure.

[00:00:16] Nasreen: Welcome back to another episode of Time to Talk Travel. This week We are talking about something that is going to impact travel to Europe and other areas next year. We're learning this with you. This is new. We're going to talk about what you need to do to get to Europe next year, what's different, what piece of paperwork you're going to need that's extra.

Des, is fresh off of a travel writer conference and heard about it first hand- what is the one biggest thing that's changing next year and then we'll trickle into everything else.

[00:00:48] Desiree: It's called ETIAS. It's the initials E T I A S. It's authorization to Board a plane, a ferry, a train to go into pretty much all of Western Europe and other regions. England, Ireland, Scotland, they're not included. There's a whole map we can share.

Essentially, you will not be able to enter any country included in this ETIAS pact without having this special authorization. It does not replace your passport, you'll still need a passport.

And there are countries where you'll still need a visa. This is for the countries where American residents go to visit and don't need a visa to visit. You'll need this now. And you won't be able to get on a plane without it. It's supposed to be very quick and easy, but In some cases, there may be a hiccup where it might take you two weeks.

In some cases, it's going to require you to actually go in and do an interview and that could take up to 30 days. So it's not something you want to joke around with.

[00:01:52] Nasreen: I'm going to dive in quickly on what it is and why it's so important because it's easy to be like, Oh, fun.

There's this new thing that I have to pay for, this extra piece of paper they want for me. They're going to make more money off the tourists. Right? But this is instituted as a security measure for them. And so, when Des is saying that you may have to go in and interview based on your initial filling in of this and not being able to get it right away, it's because this new ETIAS is the European Travel Information and Authorization System, and it's designed to prevent security incidents.

So we know there's been some issues in recent years, we talked about it on an episode about travel advisories and warnings. In an effort to better regulate who is coming over, there's a group of about 30 countries that are going to do this additional step. So if you have something that flags in your background or when you're filling this out, It may kick you to another level of screening in order to get this piece of paper, this visa.

It's gonna be about 7. 50 a person from everything I saw and kids under 18 and I think adults over 70 are exempt. It lasts for three years and it's good for trips of up to 90 days.

[00:03:07] Desiree: It's seven euros. So whatever the euro is at that time. It's not expensive.

The woman in charge of PR for this spoke at the travel conference I was at and she said they found one website where people were charging $90 for it. You don't have to pay. You can do this on your own. Now if you don't want to bother with it you can hire someone to handle it for you. but it's super simple. This is not a complicated thing. It's not something where they're trying to get rich. Seven euros is less than lunch in a lot of places.

[00:03:37] Maureen: If you had something on your record, maybe you'd need a little help.

[00:03:40] Nasreen: If you were expediting and you were already doing the package for a passport. And again, like Des said, this does not replace a passport, but citizens used to be able to get into these 30 countries with only a passport when they were coming from the U S. And so that is going to be an additional layer on top of that passport, but definitely something to plan for.

[00:04:02] Desiree: Right, and it expires when your passport expires or under three years. My passport is going to be up in two years, so when I renew my passport, have to renew my ETIAS. Otherwise, if your passport's good for another five years, you're good for three.

[00:04:17] Nasreen: We have not seen these systems yet because this is rolling out roughly in May, it's been pushed back a little bit. Not as many times as Real ID, but a little bit. They're making sure that they know that you have this piece of documentation before they get to the airport because no one wants to argue with someone who doesn't have what they need and explain to them at the airport that they can't go.

The expectation would be to get this in advance so that you can then put in those numbers and know you have them when you're booking plane tickets for travel after May. If your passport is expiring, maybe start that renewal sooner rather than later if it's going to expire before that trip because that approval is going to be tied to that passport number.

[00:04:55] Desiree: Right. And you get an ETIAS number as well. You'll be putting that on all of your travel documents. Again, it's meant to be simple. A lot of people are like, Oh, let me fill it out now. Let me be on top of things. You can not do it yet. If there's a website you go to that does say that it can process your application now, it's Not legit. when you go to fill this out, make sure you go to the legit website, which is Europa.

eu, EUROPA. E U. That's the legit one.

They said they have already seen, I think they had 106 websites already, that they have seen , that are collecting people's passport numbers, names, all of your personal information. Every single one of those is fraudulent. Every single one of them. Don't fall for it, don't fall for it, don't fall for it. Because they're going to take your information and then God help you.

Once your passport number is shared with somebody else, it's so easy for someone to run with all of your identity, your information, and then you really will be banned. It's bad. It'd be very hard to be refused, but they will tell you why. And again, it is supposed to be processed in minutes but that does not mean waiting until you're boarding your plane in order to apply for it because you may just be booted right out the door.

So, it's important.

[00:06:14] Nasreen: Absolutely. And I think we'll see as the timing goes on we'll get more information. Is this something if you're booking on a cruise line that they'll cover? I think I saw something about transatlantic cruises covering it, but , if you're flying in for a European cruise, you need to get that before you get on the cruise.

It is just something to put on your list and ask about. Make sure travel agents are on top of it. Make sure you're aware of who's doing it if you're utilizing a tour company or a cruise line.

[00:06:42] Desiree: Yeah, they were reaching out to travel writers, begging them, please get the word out on this.

I hadn't heard about it yet. And I don't feel like I have my head stuck in the sand in any way, but I just hadn't been paying attention. I've been back in Europe twice a year for the last three years. It is important. I do know that going to Europe and Mo, you could tell me if this has been the case for you, but flying back and forth. It's been a very different process, even at different airports in different countries. Going through customs in one country is a two hour long wait, and then in the next one, you breeze right through with just the biometrics they, I didn't even have to show people anything.

They just saw my face as I walked through , boom, out the door. It's, it's. Everything is updating. Another one of the changes coming is the EES that we were talking about briefly right before this started, but essentially it's the European entry and exit scheme. That's starting in August of 2024.

That one is a new electronic system that replaces the physical stamping of your passport, which makes me kind of sad because I went to a lot of countries last year and I didn't get a lot of stamps.

[00:07:50] Maureen: wouldn't it be cool if you could have a digital one, right?

At least track you somehow that you've been to these countries because it is kind of cool to look back. I always keep my passport too. You can ask them to return it because yeah, it's kind of fun. A useless thing I'll keep in a drawer.

[00:08:05] Desiree: I've seen other people use it for artwork.

I've seen people take the pages out and put them in frames . It is interesting because it does tell you that you no longer are invisible. Once you go through, you watch all the Bourne Identity movies where they track you. They absolutely can track you now.

[00:08:22] Maureen: Have a friend who doesn't want to do global entry because she doesn't want to be tracked. It's too late. They've got your biometrics for sure. With the passport I think I sent you guys that video of the poor mom who couldn't get on the plane.

This is the next level for next year. But even if you're looking to go to Europe this summer or this fall make sure that you've checked the rules. Even just per country the process could be a little bit different for what they're looking for from you and how long you have left on your passport.

I think it's supposed to be three months past your period of stay. So three months after you come back, it still needs to be good. Most people for general rules say six months. This poor woman, I can't remember. Her passport had something to do with that, that it was an older passport .

So there were a few things that she had running against her not having done her homework and the rest of her family went on the plane and she was unable to, and there's nothing worse than, than that.

[00:09:17] Nasreen: It never hurts when you're going to another country to Google blah blah blah country passport rules, U. S. passport rules. There are a couple of strange ones where you can't enter a country if you have a stamp from another country in your passport book. There are definitely some where you have to do a little extra research or you wouldn't know. When we went to Russia on a cruise, the length of time that you had to have left in your passport was longer and they had to let us know ahead of time.

And they like to stamp in the middle. They won't just do the next page. They'll just pick a random page somewhere in the middle or towards the end, which if you don't have a lot of pages left can kind of mess you up if you don't have enough pages after that. So that was a very strange one that I had not been aware of.

One of the things I will mention for all of this is we always talk about travel insurance and the importance of having it and how it protects you . While travel insurance can protect you and help you if your passport is lost or stolen, it is going to assume that you are following the rules and you have done things right.

So if all of a sudden you can't get on a flight or go on a vacation because you didn't get the right visa and couldn't get it in time, they're not going to cover the cost of that missed trip because you didn't follow procedure. It's extra important when you're buying travel insurance to make sure you're doing things the right way and giving yourself enough time.

[00:10:41] Desiree: This is another case where you really have to make sure that the name on the passport is identical to the name you use for ETIAS and the name you use for your flights. I just booked a flight for a friend who hasn't traveled in over a decade. Let's just say I know her as Jenny, but her real name is Jacqueline. Not true in this case, but let's just use those. I booked her flight as Jenny and even stopped myself and said, I wonder if I need to check if it's Jennifer. No, she would tell me her legal name. I booked her flight for that.

I was booking her flight from Atlanta to Europe, but she was booking to Atlanta because she wanted to fly with all of us. The next day she goes, Oh, you know, I didn't think about this, but on my flight , I booked with my name. You needed that, right?

Yeah, absolutely. It has to match the passport. In this case, I had used Virgin Atlantic Reward Points which booked us on a KLM flight. I had to call Virgin Atlantic, sat on hold for an hour, and they said, Sorry, we need to get through to KLM because we have to change through them. It's after hours for them, you're gonna have to call back tomorrow. For real, now it's gonna be another hour wait. Did it again the next morning, and in that case they were like, Oh, nope, sorry, send us her change of name.

It wasn't a change of name. It was just a mistake. We used a nickname, not an official name. And it was an act of God to get it changed. No joke, I had to have her send a picture of her driver's license, her passport. It was my error and it was within 24 hours.

In all honesty, I could have just canceled the flight, but I didn't want to risk losing the reward miles. This is a whole chapter in my book coming out on the airport, true tales from the terminal. There are so many times when people book the wrong airport or the wrong day because in Europe you know, 7 -10 in America is July 10th, but in Europe, that's October 7th.

Dot those I's, cross those T's and check your name . It's got to match perfectly or you will not be going anywhere.

[00:12:57] Maureen: We just had that happen twice.

My dad and mom were traveling to Australia from Houston and realized that there was a typo in his name. It was a very expensive mistake because they had to cancel a ticket and he had to rebuy it.

[00:13:10] Desiree: Whose mistake was that?

Who typed it wrong?

[00:13:13] Maureen: Probably his, honestly. He's in his seventies and he just typed an extra letter in his name and thankfully he noticed before they left. But he spent tons of time on hold. I also was waiting online to see which one we could get in faster for. That would have been a huge hiccup at the airport. They'll just deny your ID doesn't match.

Then it happened with my daughter, who was flying with her grandmother to Canada, from Houston to Toronto. I had booked her flight over the phone because If I book online, she was going to be on an unaccompanied minor, which is going to charge me 150. But she wasn't going to be unaccompanied. She was traveling with her grandmother who already had a reservation.

Long story short, that guy who I was speaking to on the phone put her in as Starlet instead of Scarlet. They were thankfully able to put a note on the file saying for the other airline that it was their error and to just check her ID again when they checked in. And she was fine.

But double check everything before you go. There is a margin of human error. Also let your friends know your real names. That's a good one.

[00:14:16] Desiree: Yeah. I mean, it was on me. I know better. I knew it sounded like a nickname.

It was on me. I had no issue sitting on hold. I multitask while I'm on hold. I didn't want her to lose the grand or me to lose the grand. You never know when they go, oops, sorry it's one minute past when you booked it last night.

Too bad for you.

[00:14:36] Maureen: I'm actually gonna drive up to Canada this weekend. I'm taking my dogs. They've all had their shots but apparently there's new rules bringing dogs into the U. S. that my dad just happened to have caught and sent to me. That changes as of August 1st.

That wouldn't affect me going in, but it will affect me bringing them back. one of my three dogs is not microchipped and it's kind of gray on what that rule is when I look online. I have an appointment at 4: 30 to go get him microchipped. That and their rabies shots. They have to be six months old.

You can't bring a puppy into the U S so don't take a puppy out. That could really screw up your day if you're trying to get back into the country.

[00:15:13] Desiree: That's an important one. That's big. I just had a friend come back from Puerto Rico helping rescue dogs and she brought a dog back in. I wonder if, I wonder if she got hit with that. Cause she was just trying to help. Bring it to where it had better odds of being adopted.

[00:15:27] Maureen: As of August 1st this year, yeah.

That would have had me scrambling to at the border to find somewhere to get the dog microchipped. I usually always travel with their rabies papers, and then I've got a copy of their other vaccinations, but it's kind of at the border patrols discretion., if you're traveling this summer after August 1st from anywhere outside the U. S. , often people are bringing dogs rescues in from outside the country. So, have to be older than 6 months, I believe microchipped, and at least have rabies. I guess rabies has increased, especially in other countries, so they don't want it coming back.

[00:16:01] Nasreen: Yeah, and I think that one of the other things that we're going to see, jumping back to the EES for a second, so that European entry system, I think that people have sometimes gotten lucky, especially those frequent travelers among us who might be going back and forth, because Technically, you are only supposed to be in Europe 90 days out of 180.

And this electronic system, they have a place for you to go online and see how many days you have left. And I think some people have skated very close if they've been going back and forth or doing a digital nomad thing and going between different countries. This is gonna electronically calculate and Know how many days you have left and whether that matches up with your flight.

Definitely be utilizing their website to check how many days they think you have left. So if there is a discrepancy, you deal with it ahead of time and you're not suddenly having to buy a last minute flight to get out of there three days before you thought you had to get out of there.

[00:17:00] Desiree: Yeah. I know people who've done that.

They go for 90 days and they leave for one and then they go back. So interesting.

[00:17:08] Maureen: And that's not the rule. Yeah.

[00:17:09] Desiree: Mo, I wanna go back to you, just casually mentioning, yeah, I'm driving to Canada this weekend, as if it's a two hour journey.

Mo lives in Texas, guys. Like, way down near Houston, yeah? Yeah. I mean,

[00:17:24] Maureen: Damn near the bottom,

yeah.

[00:17:25] Desiree: Right? How many hours is that?

[00:17:27] Maureen: It's gonna be like 22.

[00:17:29] Desiree: Oh, that's it? Yeah.

[00:17:30] Maureen: Yeah, it's actually almost a perfect triangle from

Houston to Toronto, Toronto to Miami, Miami to Houston. It's almost

[00:17:38] Desiree: You are covering the entire friggin 'country.

[00:17:41] Nasreen: It took me 28! For when I was in Texas. I don't even know how that's possible. How is Canada closer?

[00:17:47] Maureen: It is. No, because it dips down. It does. It does dip down. I'm actually going to drive back from Montreal, which 'll be 28. Yeah.

[00:17:54] Desiree: Just getting from Miami outside the state of Florida is nine hours.

That's just crazy to me that you're doing.

[00:18:01] Maureen: My son does it multiple times a year.

[00:18:04] Desiree: Is it going to take longer to go from Miami to Houston than it is Houston to Canada?

[00:18:09] Maureen: No, it's a little shorter. It's about 20 give or take, like, two hours, honestly, in that whole triangle. Because I've done Toronto to Miami a ton.

[00:18:18] Desiree: You are the road, road trip queen.

You get, you get a medal for that.

[00:18:22] Maureen: Things I will do for my doggies and to have a car. Well, I'm gone for six weeks, so it's gonna be quite the adventure. In between there we're going back down to Ohio and then back to Toronto and then to Singapore and then back and then to Montreal.

[00:18:36] Desiree: Singapore,

Singapore, like

[00:18:37] Maureen: Throw Singapore in there.

Yeah.

[00:18:39] Desiree: Yeah. The convenience store down the road. Yeah. Running.

[00:18:42] Maureen: I don't know where I'll be doing the next podcast from, but I'll pack my mic

[00:18:46] Nasreen: when you go down from Montreal, you're probably going to go right by me. Maybe I can meet you in real life.

[00:18:53] Maureen: With my daughter and three dogs.

[00:18:54] Nasreen: Hey, we can add them to my two. It's all good.

[00:18:57] Maureen: I'll hit Atlanta on the way to Miami one time with a little.

[00:19:00] Desiree: Yeah. No, I think it's probably more likely we'll see each other in Singapore.

[00:19:04] Maureen: Exactly.

[00:19:05] Desiree: The way our lives are going right now.

We were talking before the podcast about meeting up in Italy. No joke. Yeah, we might make that happen, but.

[00:19:12] Nasreen: Since we're going very random with this now, I'm going to throw in my rando fact for the day. We talked at one point in time about heritage and travel and going to places that you're from.

The Ancestry sites are interesting because they tell you where you're from related to other people, right? But there is another site called MyHeritage that reads your Ancestry results and then tells you who you're actually most like now in the common day. Because things change over time. So , think about it, my husband grew up thinking he was German. He wasn't actually German because the area of Germany that they were from wasn't Germany when they were from it.

Ancestrally, it's a different area but over time it's changed and that area of Germany now matches him. My Italian really flowed through into the current matches and it was suggesting little sites for me to go see and things to do that were related to my DNA and it was really interesting.

That's a whole episode when we dive into that one.

[00:20:10] Desiree: I love that because I, yeah, I, I did Ireland 20 years ago and then I went back again 10 years ago. I, I, I'm Irish, so I feel like that's, those are my people, but I will tell you, I mean, then I went into Scandinavia because when I did my DNA testing, I was 27 percent Scandinavian.

That was never mentioned by any ancestor anywhere. Although my name is Desiree. All the royal women in Sweden get Desiree as a middle name, which isn't that random? Desiree to me is as French as it comes, right? Desiree to be desired. But when I go to Italy and Croatia, that feels like home.

Ireland didn't feel like home. Italy, I feel like I'm in my zone. Croatia, the same. I just, it feels like home.

[00:20:59] Nasreen: And it's funny because it flowed through. Some of the kids have slightly different results, everything pulls in differently. When you do your closest genetic matches to modern populations, my results are very different from my regular results.

So it's Greek, Italian, Albanian, Macedonian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Kosovar, and Romania. And only a couple of those are in my genetic makeup, but because I'm from populations that moved around, or went to other places, I'm most like the people who are there.

[00:21:30] Desiree: 100%.

[00:21:32] Nasreen: But yeah, so anyway, back to passports, because we did not touch on one thing, which was that there is a beta renewal system online now. They're only releasing a certain number of slots every day and you have to meet criteria.

Your passport has to be from within the last 10 years, it can't have been from when you were under 18. You can't be a minor when you're doing the online renewal. But if your passport is valid and you need a renewal, you can try and snag one of the online spots, which means you don't have to send everything in and have an appointment that does not exist for you.

[00:22:06] Desiree: I have a friend who did this. She applied for it July 2nd, had her new passport, July 10th. Is that not insane? the 4th of July was in the middle of that.

Did not pay for expediting.

[00:22:20] Maureen: It should not be rocket science.

[00:22:22] Nasreen: It makes sense because it takes out the labor aspect of it, right? Because otherwise you have to go somewhere. You have to get an appointment with someone. You got to send everything off. It has to go through the mail. It has to be processed. And then they were divvying up.

Let's say you applied in New England, but the passport processing center in Houston had extra time for some reason, they would ship your stuff to wherever. It wasn't necessarily geographically close to you. It was based on who had the bandwidth to deal with it. And so now that takes Bandwidth, manpower hours out of it, and all of a sudden it can all be done online.

I mean, how hard is it to check some basic information when, like Mo says, the government already knows it all? So it should be great for people who need that faster processing.

[00:23:09] Maureen: Good. And if you don't have Global Entry, just get it too. Like, just get everything.

[00:23:13] Desiree: I will tell you the secret on that one, because it is impossible to get the appointment to be interviewed for Global Entry.

I couldn't get one for over a year when I was applying, a year and a half ago. I did get an email that said, the next time you land, you can do an appointment. You could just walk into the office right outside the Customs gate. I did that at JFK. Walked in, walked out in less than 10 minutes and had my appointment done. Even though you won't have it on the way for that European vacation you can knock out the interview and then you'll have it for your next trip.

[00:23:46] Maureen: Unless you're like me and you already have another card. I had Nexus so they didn't interview me or do anything.

[00:23:52] Desiree: I only had pre-check. Now I have global entry and I cannot wait to use it.

[00:23:56] Nasreen: And if you've looked and you didn't see an appointment and Desiree is saying you can go walk in, but you can also check for cancellations if you're already going to be in the airport because people cancel last minute, they thought they were going to make it. They thought they were going to get there with extra time. Last minute cancellations in airports are higher than other places.

[00:24:15] Desiree: Good to know. Good to know. Look at us covering all the bases. The dogs, the EES, ETIAS

[00:24:21] Nasreen: For sure. Well, we've given you a lot to process. We will come back with any updates because this is a developing situation, especially with the ETIAS. , I'm not going to say Real ID caused trust issues, but do you know how many times I rewrote an article about Real ID and how important it was and how you had to go get it now, make sure you get it, and it's super important, lectured my parents and they made a liar out of me because it still doesn't exist years later?

I mean, come on! Yeah, yeah.

[00:24:50] Desiree: Yeah, and I mean, ETIAS has been pushed back, but I think it's coming soon. They're certainly getting the word out now.

[00:24:56] Nasreen: I believe in them. I believe it's coming.

[00:24:58] Desiree: It's Europe.

[00:24:59] Maureen: I believe they will be tracking everything soon. They just gotta figure it out.

[00:25:04] Nasreen: Until next time, plan your European travels either way, but add it to your checklist. We'll be back again with another travel topic next week. Thanks for listening.

[00:25:15] Desiree: Happy travels.

[00:25:17] Narrator: This has been another episode of Time to Talk Travel, brought to you by HashtagTravels. com. You can keep in touch with us between episodes by checking out our site, joining our newsletter, or connecting with us on social. We've always got the information you need in our episode notes. Until next time, happy travels, and thanks for being a part of our trip.