UKC

It seems that millions of summer holidays are at risk due to chaos at the passport office. Has anyone here been affected by this? If you still have a valid EU style passport  is there a requirement to replace it with a black/blue UK passport now and before the old one expires?  I had understood that the purple one was to remain valid until it's expiry date?

https://www.cityam.com/pandemic-passport-chaos-millions-put-summer-plans-on...

Part of the problem is that your passport cannot be any more than 10 years older than the issue date to get into the EU (irrespective of who issued it). However, when people have renewed their passport in the past, any unused time from the old one got added to the new one, so the expiry date can be more than ten years after the issue date.  Now people are learning about this, and also looking at their passports anyway, the demand is high.  Let's say 20% of people only renew their passports when they check them to go on holiday later in the year and notice they're about to expire. 2 years of covid means this year 60% of 1 year's worth of people are wanting to renew for that reason. Then add the amount who are beyond 10 years. Result - chaos.  There's no requirement to get a new passport unless your existing one will be beyond 10 years old or has <6 months validity on it when you travel.

The 6 months requirement seems to vary from country to country.  Would have messed up our summer holiday plans, but just checked for France and Switzerland and they only require 3 months validity on date of return.  Whether this is 3 months to expiry or 3 months to '10 years from issue' remains grey area, FCO website says the government has asked for clarification.

See this post for info on the ten years and three month conditions.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/destinations/traveling_to_france_passport...