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QUARANTINE

‘Essential’ travel forms and quarantine portal: France updates travel info for UK

France has published permission forms all travellers need to fill in if they are travelling to and from the UK from Saturday onwards. It has also placed online a portal for those who will need to quarantine on return.

Published: 17 December 2021 10:29 CET
Updated: 17 December 2021 14:35 CET
France has imposed strict new border controls for people travelling from the UK.
France has imposed strict new border controls for people travelling from the UK. The online portal that passengers must register on is now active. (Photo by Tolga Akmen / AFP)

The French government has announced tighter rules on travel to and from the UK that will come into force at midnight Friday /Saturday due to the explosion of Covid infections caused by the Omicron variant.

These rules, which include tighter rules and pre-departure tests and obligatory quarantine (full details here), apply to all travellers whether fully vaccinated or not.

All non-essential travel to and from the UK has been barred – including for “tourism and professional reasons”.

The French interior minister has published an attestation for leaving French territory for the the UK. All travellers, both vaccinated and non-vaccinated will need to fill it in if they travel after midnight on Friday/Saturday. The form is available here.

Travellers are warned if they don’t have an essential reason or the evidence needed to prove it then they may be barred from travel.

A separate attestation for those travelling to France under the new rules has also been published. It is available here.

It also includes the list of essential reasons for travel, one of which must be ticked. The form will need to be presented to travel companies, like Eurotunnel, where it can be uploaded or to border control.

Quarantine portal

If you meet the essential travel requirements, you will have to submit some personal details via an online platform, which has now been activated, before your return or departure to France. 

You can access the platform HERE. 

The site can be accessed in multiple languages. You will need to fill all the standard biographical details and declare whether you are a health worker or not. You will also be asked for a French social security number (although you can just write “0” if you don’t have one), vaccination status and the address where you will be quarantining upon arrival in France. 

After filling out the form, you will be able to download an identification file. We recommend that you either save this file on your phone or print it. You are not allowed to travel without completing the form. It may be useful to carry it on you as you cross the border. 

The purpose of this form is to alert French law enforcement authorities of where you will be self-isolating in France upon your arrival. The police could check that you are respecting the quarantine measures once you get here – if you are found to be violating them, you could face a hefty fine. 

Remember that you must quarantine for at least 48 hours after arriving in France. If after 48 hours, you present a negative Covid test, you can leave self-isolation. If you do not take a test, you must remain isolated for 10 days according to the ministry if interior rather than the 7 days initially announced by the government spokesperson.

 

Member comments

      2. Strange that people find that release of a few rules & a 2 page form must have been ‘planning for weeks’ as if that is a conspiracy.

        1. The rules/form are essentially those that have been applied to many countries for ages – so you literally could easily draw this up overnight.
        2. Since the Omicron variant news came out of SA (weeks ago), I would think it reasonable & competent to draw up contingency plans for slowing its growth in France – including measures for any country where it became widespread.

  3. Yet another confusing bit of information. According to messages I am receiving from Ryanair I should have booked a Day 8 PCR test too. I thought it was an Antigen/PCR test before departure and a PCR test on or before day 2. Have I got it wrong?

  4. At least the French don’t have to debate for hours in Parliament like a bunch of kids bickering before implementing precautions!

  5. I downloaded that document to fill out. Its in French, but the copy-and–paste is disabled, so I have to re-type the entire document in French to get a translation.

  6. Its pretty insensitive to announce a new policy Thursday, that you have 24 hours to get out of the country, at a time when all the Eurostars are full. If they were considering this, they could have announced the possibility so that cautious people would have a few days to get out. We were in a small town on the German border Thursday night at 9 pm when I saw something about this on Facebook. With various trains being full or cancelled, I could not get to Paris until Friday 4:30 pm. Now I might be stuck I a country, with my 90 day visa about to run out.

    Its kind of clear this is related to the British not giving fishing licenses and Macron getting angry at Boris for releasing some confidential letter.

  7. My son has travelled to his fiances home in Greman for Christmas with her and her family. He plans to leave there after a week andthen drive from Gremany to France to stay with us for a few days. As he has now been in Europe for over 7 days and is travelling by car accross the border to reach us will he need any documents with him? He is double vacinated and will have had a test before he came to Germany, should he get a covid test before he leaves Germany just to be safe? I really do not know what the EU travel rules are and as there are no borders check points anyway who is going to be checking his paperwork? thanksin anticipation for you your constructive comments

  8. All very interesting details thank you. I rely on this for up to date information and am grateful for these latest regulation details. The article seems to jump around between U.K. to France, then suddenly France to U.K. and perhaps I’ m tired but I had to keep checking if the particular paragraph referred to U.K. to France or vice versa. Rules are different of course depending on direction of travel and there seemed insufficient clarity on this.

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TRAVEL NEWS

EES: Why is the UK-France border such a problem for the EU’s new biometric passport checks?

The EU's proposed new system of passport checks known as the Entry & Exit System will apply to all of the Bloc's external borders - so why are most of the warning lights coming from the France-UK border? And is it really Brexit related?

Published: 8 May 2024 12:03 CEST
EES: Why is the UK-France border such a problem for the EU's new biometric passport checks?

The EU’s new Entry & Exit System of enhanced passport checks – including biometric checks like facial scans and fingerprints – is due to come into effect later this year.

You can read a full explanation of how it works HERE and see our frequently-asked-questions section HERE, including information for non-EU citizens who are resident in an EU country and the system for dual nationals.

EES will apply to the whole of the EU and Schengen zone and will apply at external borders, but not for travel within the Schengen zone itself (eg between France and Germany or Italy and Switzerland).

You can hear the team at The Local discuss the latest developments on EES on the Talking France podcast – listen here or on the link below

The EU has plenty of external borders from land borders such as the Greece-Albania border to the airport frontiers that occur when, for example, an American flies into Italy.

But while several nations have expressed concern that their infrastructure is not ready, the loudest and most dire warnings are coming about the border between France and the UK.

READ ALSO Travellers between France and UK could face ’14-hour queues’ due to new passport system

So why is this border such a problem?

The problems with the UK France border are threefold; volume of traffic, space and juxtaposed borders.

Volume of traffic – This is simply a very busy border crossing, about 60 million passengers a year cross it by ferry, plane, Channel Tunnel or Eurostar. For people travelling from the UK, especially those crossing by car on the ferry or Channel Tunnel, France is simply a stopping point as they head into Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands or to Spain or Italy.

Around 70 percent of those passengers are British, which means they will have to do the EES checks.

READ ALSO Could the launch of EES be delayed again?

Space – The second problem is to do with the space that is required to process all those passengers as several crossing points – especially the Port of Dover and the embarkation area at London St Pancras – are quite crowded and for various reasons don’t have room to expand.

Extra infrastructure is required to complete EES pre-registration checks and this will be difficult to physically fit into some crossing points – for context the EES pre-registration area for the Channel Tunnel at Coquelles covers 7,000 square metres.

Juxtaposed border controls – the UK-France border is also unique within the EU because of its juxtaposed border controls, which are the result of a bilateral agreement between France and the UK known as the Le Touquet agreement.

Juxtaposed border controls exist at Paris Gare du Nord and London St Pancras for those using the Eurostar, the ports of Dover and Calais and the Channel Tunnel terminals at Folkestone and Coquelles – these mean that when you leave the UK you get your passport checked by both British and French authorities, and then there are no passport checks when you arrive in France – and vice versa.

This means that if there is a hold-up at one border control it has a knock-on effect on the other and means that very long queues can quickly build up – as has been seen several times at the Port of Dover since Brexit.

The Brexit effect

Part of the problem with the UK-France border is that discussions about EES began while the UK was still a member of the EU, and then the conversation changed once it had left.

However, even when it was in the EU, the UK never joined the Schengen zone so there were always passport checks for travellers between France and the UK.

The difference is that EU citizens are exempt from EES – so those 70 percent of passengers crossing that border who are British would have been exempt from the changes had it not been for Brexit.

French and other EU citizens remain exempt and will not have to complete EES pre-registration once the system is up and running. 

Therefore EES would have only applied to a tiny minority of travellers entering the UK – for example American tourists arriving into London – which logistically would be a much easier challenge, especially for the Port of Dover whose customers are overwhelmingly either British or EU nationals.

What about Ireland?

Had it not been for Brexit, the UK would have been in a similar situation as Ireland is now – since Ireland is a member of the EU but not the Schengen zone.

Under the new system Ireland will not use the EES system at its own borders and will carry on manually stamping passports.

However, anyone who has an Irish passport will be exempt from EES when they are travelling within Europe – for dual nationals this only applies of they are travelling on their Irish passport.

READ ALSO Your questions answered about the EU’s new EES system

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