With speculation growing that the UK and EU will fail to strike a deal before Brexit day on 29 March 2019, Chief Minister John Le Fondré said that a number of Islanders have contacted him asking for reassurance that Jersey will be prepared for such a scenario.
Speaking on his latest video blog broadcast, Senator Le Fondré said that a web page had been set up where Islanders could check whether their passports will remain valid post-Brexit as part of the government’s contingency preparations in the event of a ‘no deal’ outcome.
The web page says that when the UK leaves the EU there will be new rules for British and Jersey passport-holders travelling to the Schengen Area – a free-movement zone with few internal border checks and comprising 26 European countries, most of which are in the EU.
It says that in the case of no deal, Islanders could be denied access to countries such as France, Portugal and Poland, if their passports are too old or close to expiry.
‘From 30 March 2019 if you are a British passport holder (including those passports issued by the Jersey Passport Office), you will be considered a third-country national under the Schengen Border Code and will therefore need to comply with different rules to enter and travel around the Schengen Area,’ it says.
According to the Schengen Border Code, ‘third country’ passports must have been issued within the last ten years on the date of arrival in a Schengen country and should have six months’ validity remaining.
Adults are being urged to check that their passports are no more than nine-and-a-half years old when they arrive in a Schengen country, while child passports should have at least six months remaining before expiry.
Speaking on his ‘vlog’ broadcast, Senator Le Fondré said that he wanted to ‘reassure’ Islanders that the government is ready for a no-deal Brexit should it happen.
‘Islanders have been writing to me asking about our planning in the event of a no-deal Brexit in March 2019, which still remains a possibility,’ he said. ‘I want to reassure you that Brexit contingency planning is taking place across government to ensure that we have access to the supplies and services we need in the event of a no deal.
‘We [have] published the latest in a series of responses to the UK’s technical notices on no deal Brexit, including matters like data protection and telecoms.
‘There are also important changes to passport validity and travelling to Europe. What you can do is use a very useful calculator we produced on gov.je to make sure that your passport will still be valid for travel after Brexit day.’
The UK and Ireland are not part of the Schengen Area and, together with the Crown Dependencies – Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, have their own area of free movement called the Common Travel Area.
A technical notice issued by the UK government last week provided assurances that there would be no changes to this arrangement post-Brexit and British and Irish citizens, including those in the Crown Dependencies, would retain the same travel rights within the Common Travel Area.
The passport validity web page can be found at gov.je/Travel/Passports/BrexitAndTravel/Pages/BrexitPassportChanges.aspx.
