Eurotunnel will test drive-through biometric border checks under EU deal

Eurotunnel will install airport-style passport and fingerprinting controls at its Folkestone and Calais terminals after the European Commission agreed to a trial designed to prevent what the tunnel's owner calls "short-term and long-term chaos" at the border. The system, already in use at airports in Rome and Paris, replaces the requirement for British travellers to step out of their cars and submit biometrics at a terminal building with special drive-through kiosks. For the roughly ten million passengers who cross the Channel through the tunnel each year facing a new EU-wide biometric regime, the design choices made at Folkestone and Calais will define whether post-Brexit border crossings stay fluid or grind into miles-long tailbacks. But nothing is guaranteed: the underlying EU system is years late, and the trial itself runs for two years before anyone knows whether it becomes permanent.

What has the European Commission approved?

The core of the breakthrough is an "eagle eye" camera arrangement — a supervisory camera system that lets police monitor biometric capture remotely rather than standing beside each traveller. Police already use comparable setups at airports, where officers are not physically present at every e-gate.

Under the agreement, both sides of the border are now equipped with 120 kiosks. Each car pulls up to an individual kiosk fitted with two stands per vehicle, which read passports, take fingerprints and capture facial images while drivers and passengers remain seated. Yann Leriche, chief executive of Getlink, the Eurotunnel owner, said the company had tried to replicate the "airport experience" but wanted to go much further than a simple copy.

The design matters because of the EU's Entry and Exit System, known as EES. That regime requires all third-country citizens — including British passport holders since Brexit — to submit fingerprints and facial images when entering and exiting the Schengen area (the EU's passport-free zone). Getting out of a car to do that, at the volume the tunnel handles, was widely expected to cause gridlock at the terminal approaches.

The Commission's authorization followed what Leriche described as "many, many discussions" with the European Commission and French authorities. "The French authorities are also on board because for them it is more efficient, too, so we are all aligned on the trial," he said.

The trial will last two years, and Eurotunnel hopes the experiment will become permanent if it performs.

Why did the original plan fail?

Getlink's first proposal was a tablet handed to passengers inside their cars for self-fingerprinting and facial capture. The company also examined a model in which travellers park and walk into the terminal for fingerprinting. Both designs shared a fatal flaw: they required the physical presence of a police officer for every first-time fingerprinting.

That police-presence rule exists as a safeguard against subterfuge. Criminals could, for example, use a fellow passenger with a "clean skin" fingerprint to submit biometrics on someone else's behalf. First-time travellers — known as "primos" in the jargon — are therefore subject to heightened verification.

Leriche said the company pressed officials on the consequences of the original approach. "We told the authorities: it is going to be a mess. Many people are going to the wrong place and you can't have police jumping from one place to the next to solve the issues. It would also means customers would have a bad experience, particularly at peak time," he said.

He argued that nobody had previously considered applying airport logic to a land border. "This is not something people in airports experience, but nobody approached this before, thinking we could have an airport experience at the border here. But we said: why not?" he said.

The remote-supervision model dissolves the police bottleneck. One monitored camera can cover a kiosk instead of one officer per encounter, which is what made the drive-through format viable at scale.

What happens next?

In the coming weeks, Leriche will meet UK and French authorities to present a 40-page proposal. It asks them to let Eurotunnel become what he calls a "laboratory" for an "intelligent border," drawing on emerging technology and lessons learned from the United States and Singapore.

The company drew particular inspiration from visits to US–Mexico border controls, where drivers and passengers remain in their cars throughout inspection.

Leriche framed the stakes plainly: "It will prevent the chaos in the long term and the short term and if the experiment works, as hopefully it will, then it will become permanent."

That hopeful clause carries weight, because the timeline remains outside Getlink's control.

Why the EES rollout keeps slipping

The EES was supposed to be active across the EU by 9 September. Nine of the 27 EU member states, including France, have yet to deploy it fully because of continued technical issues. The regime has been delayed for years.

For Eurotunnel, the delay cuts both ways. It postpones the logistical nightmare of mass biometric capture at a land border, but it also leaves the operator in limbo with hardware ready and no certainty about when it will be needed. Leriche said he has no idea when France will introduce the system.

"It has been delayed and delayed and delayed, but our kiosks are there, they are can function but the connection with the French system is still not working. It is a question was are asking all the time," he said.

The technical fragility extends to the vendors building the system itself. This week it emerged that the EU has filed a lawsuit against IBM and two other companies involved in the implementation of EES.

What is at stake for travellers?

The story is, at bottom, about whether a Brexit consequence — Britons becoming third-country nationals subject to biometric registration — can be absorbed by infrastructure rather than queues. Eurotunnel is the EU's busiest land freight and passenger link with the UK, and EES has always threatened miles-long tailbacks at the approach to the terminal during peak holiday periods.

The 120-kiosk eagle-eye model is the most concrete attempt yet to answer that threat without staffing every lane with officers. Its two-year trial will produce the first real-world evidence of whether drive-through biometrics can match airport throughput at a vehicle border.

The open questions are the ones Leriche cannot answer: when France's systems will actually connect, and whether regulators will let a permanent intelligent border emerge from the laboratory.