UK's "e-Borders scheme: Illegal under EU Law?
 

Will EU law stop the e-Borders scheme? | Henry Porter | Comment is ...
Jul 2, 2009 ... Henry Porter: Proposals to collect 53 pieces of information from everyone leaving Britain are revealed as potentially illegal under EU law.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/.../2009/j...-breaks-eu-law -

British plans to have airline, ferry and train operators "collect 53 pieces of info from everyone leaving Britain' may be illegal - says this article.

Critics point to the 1.2 billion Pound e-Borders scheme as unduly intrusive and potentially causing huge delays at frontiers

Now we need ID cards for a trip to the Isle of Wight under new ...
Mar 29, 2009 ... Passengers on ferries to the Isle of Wight will soon have to carry identity papers to comply with new police anti-terror powers.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/.../...sle-Wight.html

and this scheme even involves ferries to the Isle of Wight and to Scottish islands

so expect longer check-in times at trains like the Chunnel train to France or Belgium and ferries, even within the U.K.

Indeed this scheme was to be launched two years ago, the article above says, but was 'dropped after protests from Ulster politicians who said the plan would construct 'interna borders' in the U.K."

Now we need ID cards for a trip to the Isle of Wight under new ...
Mar 29, 2009 ... Passengers on ferries to the Isle of Wight will soon have to carry identity papers to comply with new police anti-terror powers.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/.../...sle-Wight.html

Palenque both your links are broken. The House of Lords have already revised the proposals re travel between UK and Ireland, the so-called contact area. Your story in the Guardian is a blog from the beginning of July and there is already progress in amending these proposals.

You always seem to have your knife into the UK or is it only England. The French people I know in England blame our laxness for the congregation of illegal immigrants in France waiting for a chance to enter England, so what is anyone to do? It should be noted that you practically have to give a blood sample when booking an airline ticket already. The proposals are for introduction in 2014 so whichever Party is elected within the next 10 months will have to see this through.

"Now we need ID cards for a trip to the Isle of Wight under new ...Mar 29, 2009 ... Passengers on ferries to the Isle of Wight will soon have to carry identity papers to comply with new police anti-terror powers."

I think you'll find that the next Conservative government of the UK will put paid to such half-baked nonsense long before it gets on the statute book.

helen - that passengers leaving from the U.K. need to do all this is what seems weird - arrivals i can understand more

and i really only like to discuss these type things and get Brits viewpoints - i really sincerely am interested in things like these - i would also do with the French, etc. but due to the language barrier few of these participate. Please do not think i only hate Britain - if you read all my posts you will realize that is not true.

and thanks for providing the update. I do indeed, as a lifetime member of the the ACLU have a skeptical eye to police powers gone amok as it seems in internal U.K. ships having to do this for places like the Scottish Islands - why? Are there illegals flocking to Mull, or terrorists? Seems to be a farce in that case.

Gordon is probably mistaken: Cameron instinctively sides with the civil service, which is where this bill originated.

The e-borders project, and the associated ID card legislation, have been shamefully badly reported by UK media. The Tories have vacillated (Cameron, at one crucial vote, discovered an urgent constituency Christmas carol concert he had to be at - so urgent none of us in the constituency had ever heard of it): Labour MPs were whipped into voting for an extraordinarily ill-conceived bill.

Behind it, there are two or three getting on for OK arguments:

- British terrorists are clearly going to camps in Pakistan to learn how to murder their neighbours in God's name
- Stop people with South Asian names on the way out for questioning and their idiot co-religionists (the people the terrorists happily kill) start screaming discrimination.
- So - goeth the argument, we all have to file journey plans.
- BUT, there's currently no border with Ireland, so anyone can come and go across it as they please (yes, I know we fought a real war without a proper Irish border, but with a Nazi sympathiser running the joke state in southern Ireland. But that doesn't count). The Irish allegedly won't cooperate in creating a mini-Schengen. The Northern Irish (both sides) will whine if travel between Britain and N Ireland has bureaucracy other inter-island journeys in the British Isles don't have. So public servants were claiming we needed to install ID checks on ALL flights and inter-island ferries throughout the British Isles.

It's bureaucrats' logic gone doolally. The whole thing's changed since they've abandoned all this nonsense about borders with Ireland.

Will a revised e-borders Bill get through this parliament? No, unless there's a really major terrorist atrocity between now and May. Labour's run out of steam for this kind of complexity.

Will a similar Bill get through the next one? I'd say very probably. Dave just isn't into challenging the mandarins, and doesn't understand detail.

Now if the LibDems are a coalition partner in a hung parliament...

Thanks flanner for those details

And this is of concern to foreign tourists - all that info having to be provided to go to say Mull or Skye, etc. I see the rational - profiling the types who are more likely to be going off the mainland for say terrorist training, etc. i know must be an anthema to British civil rights organizations as well as the sizeable non-Causcasion population that would be so targeted.

"as well as the sizeable non-Causcasion population that would be so targeted"

You've completely missed the point.

All this proposed bureaucracy is to AVOID profiling, targetting or making the Northern Irish feel discriminated against. Because I'm being told to declare which Calais hypermarket I'm buying the month's booze at, the parents of Mohammed Al Terrorist can't scream discrimination when he's told to declare which bomb-making factory he'll be going to while he's visiting the rellies in the Punjab.

flanner i was agreeing with you - i writ it pourly i guess - you must avoid profiling and us to even though IMO you should profile to make the most impact - having grannies take off their shoes in airports is a waste of time and manpower that could be used to track more likely suspects.

"having grannies take off their shoes in airports is a waste of time and manpower "

Well, the moment you exempt grannies, you guarantee the next one trying to get to Paradise the easy way will be a 93-year old woman.

Just about the only UK mainland-born IRA terrorist during the 1965-2001 Troubles was a female, Protestant-origin, toff. One of the very few people ever actually to have been caught by LHR security taking a bomb onto an El Al plane was a pregnant young Irishwoman - impregnated by her Palestinian terrorist boyfriend so he could conceal the bomb in her luggage.

maybe we should just close off all frontiers?

>>maybe we should just close off all frontiers?<<

Or use our common sense and take our chances, as we've managed to do quite successfully for quite a long time.

Cut and paste, cut and paste. Hate England. Cut and paste....Hate England....

It gets a bit tired after a while.

Especially when it is so clearly needs.

"It gets a bit tired"

Not nearly as tired as we'll all be if the absurdities of the e-borders proposals (allegedly put forward at the request of, among others, the Metropolitan Police) go ahead.

Opposition has been pathetic - and D Cameron has been exceptionally pathetic. If ONLY David Davis had been elected, we'd have a Leader of the Opposition instead of a spineless Leader of Repeating Witty Insults His Scriptwriters Have Produced.

PalQ - for once - is perfectly right to castigate us over an appallingly illiberal Bill. Rather than attack him, you might explain why your employers think they've got a right to know where I'm going before I'm to be allowed on a plane.

I haven't the foggiest why we want to know. We'll just lose the information anyway. We lose every other bloody thing.

Frankly I've given up on the whole sorry jamboree. We are marching towards fascism and no one seems to give a toss.

CW - going to take the money and piss off to Basra at this rate. At least they have rules. And the money.

I thought the identity card scheme had been knocked on the head?

CW - you really don't want to go to Basra. Been there, seen it, been rocketed, saluted the coffins. There isn't enough money printed to make it worthwhile.

a Monkey a day. For looking tough in raybans. I can do that.

Tempting. Very tempting.

I get shot at in bloody London.

A Monkey? There's a reason for that.

It's more than double what I get at the moment.

I am seriously tempted. Very seriously. One year; £180,000.

It can't be worse than the Glyndon Estate in Woolwich.