Due to long waiting times, the public has been cautioned against making holiday plans without a valid Norwegian passport as travel documents may not arrive in time for the trip.
“We would strongly encourage people to wait to book a holiday abroad before they know that they have their travel documents in order,” Bjørn Vandvik from the Norwegian Police Directorate said in a statement on Wednesday.
Previously the police said that those travelling within the EEA this summer should instead order a national ID card which allows for travel within the Schengen area because that form of travel documentation was subject to shorter waiting times.
Those wishing to travel during fellesferie, the collective holiday period in Norway, have been advised to order new travel documents by the end of May or the beginning of June at the latest.
Despite the measures put in place by the police to try and ensure that supply meets demand, waiting lists are growing longer, and the authorities don’t expect the backlog to be cleared until the autumn.
The current waiting time for passports is around seven weeks. However, the police have said they expect this to increase to 10 weeks by July.
READ MORE: How do Norway’s slow passport processing times compare to Denmark and Sweden?
So far this year, the police have received 560,40 passport applications. In contrast, the police registered 270,000 applications in 2019.
A mixture of the pandemic and war in Ukraine has made getting the materials used to produce national ID cards and passports more difficult.
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