Eve Lugg is a Voice for Freedom with Fighting for a Free Future - our group of young advocates fighting for liberty, freedom, and free markets. Eve served as Special Adviser (SpAd) in the Cabinet Office and brings with her experience in policy and comms, as well as knowledge of how Whitehall really operates.
Like many Brits, I have travelled to the EU on a variety of occasions since October 2025, and have therefore experienced one of the less advertised consequences of becoming a third-country national: Brussels would now like my fingerprints.
This is not a particularly recent phenomenon. The EU began rolling out its new Entry/Exit System (EES) in October 2025. Since April this year, it has been fully operational, meaning British visitors to the Schengen area are now routinely required to register biometric information at its external borders, including fingerprints and a facial image. The system also records passport details and where and when travellers enter and leave. It brings back uncomfortable memories of Covid passenger locator forms, when international travel suddenly involved informing the authorities where you were staying, for how long and how you could be contacted. Measures introduced as administrative necessities have a habit of making extraordinary intrusions feel remarkably ordinary for most.
We were warned about EES, of course. Big Brother Watch Director Silkie Carlo raised the alarm years ago. This is how erosions of liberty so often happen: announced, implemented and then quietly absorbed into everyday life.
This latest one comes packaged as part of Europe’s “smart borders”.
I find it amusing how the word “smart” has become one of the most effective words governments use to make surveillance sound benign. Smart borders. Smart ID. Smart technology. It all sounds frictionless, modern and most importantly - terribly convenient. Convenient at what price? We marvel at what technology enables before asking whether the state should be doing it in the first place.
This isn’t about Brexit, or whether countries should police their borders. It is about why doing so apparently requires harvesting the fingerprints of millions of law-abiding travellers. I’d love to know how effective this has been at identifying the overstayers, illegal immigrants or identity fraudsters.
This time, when at my destination airport and presented with the screen asking for my “consent”, I tried answering “no”. There is only one correct answer to this question in order to enjoy a trip in the Schengen area, but I thought I’d try anyway. Obviously I was taken back to the beginning.
What sort of choice is that? I had bought my ticket, boarded the plane and arrived at the border. What exactly was I supposed to do if I didn’t want to hand over my biometrics - turn around and fly home? If entry is conditional on providing biometric information, let’s dispense with the fiction that I am freely choosing to provide it.
Of course, technically, there is a choice - don’t travel to the EU. But how meaningful is that in reality?
I asked fellow passengers what they thought of the new system. Everyone mentioned the delays, how tedious it was, how long it took.
Their personal information will be mixed in with eventually billions of pieces of data, spanning photographs, palm prints, DNA records and facial biometrics, to which controversial recognition algorithms can be applied. This may be the biggest biometric data collection operation in European history. Biometric information is fundamentally different from the other data we routinely surrender. If somebody steals my password, I change it. If my bank card is compromised, I cancel it. I cannot reset my fingerprints or order a replacement face. Yet this wasn’t what people seemed concerned about.
The problem is bigger than Brussels, of course. Britain’s enthusiasm for facial recognition, digital identity (and yes - Digital ID will be back - and not to stop the boats) and biometric technology deserves precisely the same scrutiny.
Governments increasingly assume that because technology enables them to collect, store and cross-reference information about us, they should.
“Smart” cannot become shorthand for “don’t ask questions”, and convenience cannot disguise surveillance as progress.
Standing in that airport queue did not make me regret Brexit. I’d wait longer to stay outside a political union I don't believe Britain should belong to. The queue is tedious, slow and unnecessary - but it is temporary. My fingerprints, however, are in that database forever, and will be linked up to who knows what in the future. It is the latter that should bother us most.
Eve Lugg is a Voice for Freedom with Fighting for a Free Future - our group of young advocates fighting for liberty, freedom, and free markets. Eve served as Special Adviser (SpAd) in the Cabinet Office and brings with her experience in policy and comms, as well as knowledge of how Whitehall really operates.
You put your finger on the real problem here Eve - most people just don’t care about this stuff. The most important question for libertarians today is how can we make our arguments compelling to the wider public who don’t think about the longer-term implications of these policies. Only when politicians feel the heat from electorates will they do anything to temper the bureaucracy’s insatiable desire for more control.
You are absolutely right. It's always one small slice at a time and one minor inconvenience.
The UK takes biometrics from visitors and has been for a long time. We are only now seeing this as we are facing it.