French authorities 'suspend new EU border checks' as holidaymakers at Dover face three-hour delays in 30C heat
The May bank holiday weekend is being seen as an early test of the new European Union entry checks
French police suspended additional EU border checks at Dover on Saturday after thousands of bank holiday travellers heading to Calais were caught in delays of up to three hours on the hottest day of the year.
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Passengers were forced to wait in their cars for hours in temperatures above 30C as new EU digital passport controls slowed processing.
The Port of Dover said it had escalated the “challenging situation” with border authorities, adding that the temporary suspension would help reduce queues at the terminal and ease congestion on surrounding roads.
By lunchtime, the port said traffic was “slow-moving” and check-in processing times had fallen to under an hour. Shortly after 2pm, it said traffic was “free-flowing” with the additional checks being reinstated at around 5pm.
The May bank holiday weekend is being seen as an early test of the new European Union entry checks.
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In a post on X, the port said: “We are pleased that Police Aux Frontieres (PAF) have responded positively by invoking the Article 9 clause of the EES regulations.”
It added that it would continue working with PAF and other partners to move passengers through the port “as swiftly as possible” while keeping local roads clear.
Earlier, roads around the Kent port were described as “heavily congested”, with delays of about two hours to access the site.
Tourist traffic in the buffer zone had been facing processing times of around two-and-a-half hours, according to the port.
However, the port said processing times for tourist traffic had fallen to about 50 minutes after the requirement for non-EU passengers to register biometric details was suspended.
#TrafficUpdate at #PortofDover. There is currently a 50-minute processing time for tourist traffic in the Buffer Zone. The surrounding roads are still very congested, with queues of approximately 2 hours to access the Port. Due to this congestion, traffic exiting the Port is…
— Port of Dover Travel (@PoD_travelnews) May 23, 2026
"Everything is now relatively speedy" for vehicles moving through the Port of Dover, according to Simon Calder, a travel correspondent at The Independent.
"It's not looking anything like as sticky as it was earlier," he told Sky News.
The bank holiday weekend is one of the first real tests of the new EES system under high traffic volumes.
The move by French authorities suggests there is still work to be done to properly manage demand ahead of the summer months.
Calder explained that, unlike air travel, travellers in Dover and Folkestone are processed "before they travel to France", where French police do their usual checks.
"If you are a British citizen, then they have to do quite a lot of work," he added.
The Entry/Exit System (EES) has been gradually rolled out across Europe over the past year.
The manual stamping of passports was intended to be scrapped in favour of non-EU citizens registering their biometric details, such as fingerprints and a photo, automating the process of registering travellers' entries and exits.
Julia Lo Bue-Said, chief executive of Advantage Travel Partnership, a network of independent travel agents, previously warned British travellers to anticipate delays and "allocate four hours for navigating the new system in these initial stages".
Meanwhile, railway service LeShuttle warned that check-in at Folkestone could take around an hour and a half, with "advance bookings only". Border controls will then take about an hour.
The provider assured travellers that "if you miss your departure, we will board you on the next available shuttle. It also indicated a roughly hour-and-a-half delay for departures.