What Is ‘Passport Power’?

What's Up With Britain and Europe?

Previously, UK citizens could travel as they liked to the Schengen Zone (that is, the bulk of the European Union that shares one single border jurisdiction). Now, they are subject to a formula best summarised as ’90 days in every 180 days.’

The EU Commission provides a helpful little calculator to get to grips with this.

Some complain that Britain’s ‘passport power’ - and by extension, national dignity - is falling fast. This is very short sighted.

On February 1st 2020, I watched the European Union Flag come down over Gibraltar for the last time. In far off Britain, many of my friends - including a prominent Tory MEP who had been a fierce proponent of the Brexit referendum - were already scrambling to obtain Irish passports. ‘Plastic Paddies’, as they are known, believe their status as Europeans is upheld by this split national allegiance. But there's a problem with that...

The Advantage of a UK Passport in Europe

Today, a number of struggling Mediterranean economies are scrambling to issue ‘Digital Nomad Visas,’ allowing foreigners to bring their incomes to their shores for extended periods. UK citizens can now live, work and collect their earnings in ways which were not possible before Brexit. The list of arrangements varies by country, but the real kicker with these schemes is that they are not available to EU citizens - who must continue to pay EU tax.

UK remote workers can now live in Spain, for example, and obtain residency for five years or more, paying just 15 per cent tax. However, I would argue that even this misses the point of Brexit and what people really believed they were voting for.

The Masters of our Fates

Gibraltar, a tiny UK territory at the south of Spain, voted 95% to remain in the EU. But raw data is a deceptive measure of human behaviour. Following Spain’s post-Brexit attempts to strong-arm Gibraltar, that number will certainly be lower, not higher, by now.

The further people are from the frontiers of reality (or perhaps I should say, the reality of frontiers), the more they cling to data-driven misconceptions about free movement and ‘passport power.’ For diehard remain voters, foreign policy is a matter of economic triage in which frills like ‘sovereignty’ oughtn’t to get in the way of practical sense. This leaves Brexiteers hard pushed to explain that threats of ostracisation from both the UK Remain lobby and the EU - however mild - were part of the reason for Brexit to start with, rather than a deterrent. As it turns out, those threats may also have been rather shallow.

So I’d like to offer some anecdotal perspective on the ins and outs (that is, entries and exits) of Europe without an EU passport.

Brexit Travel Chaos

I am a sea captain. For the first year of British independence, few travelled anywhere due to the COVID phenomenon. A ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy was applied to air crews and sea crews who could not be expected to be fully vaccinated and boosted to every required standard of every jurisdiction they travelled to. This attitude soon spread to passport controls. Indeed, the absurdity of upholding officialdom for the few legitimate arrivals in Italian sea ports must have rankled, because many laid off their customs staff entirely. I entered and exited multiple times without being stamped in or out at all.

Yet I was assured by people in London who had barely stepped outside their houses - or the echo chamber of the long defeated Remain movement - that things were about to get worse:

“As the reality of Brexit bites and international travel increases post-lockdown, Britons are about to find out a few things about border privilege – namely, what happens when you lose it. Only a nation that viewed freedom of travel as an entitlement could have thrown it away so breezily. Those who did not grow up with border privilege can tell you that without it travel is an obstacle course; something you gird your loins for, prepare dossiers of documents for, say several hail Marys and inshallahs for.”

- Nesrine Malik, Guardian, 2022.

In 2023, when things had returned to normal, I ended up over-staying my Schengen welcome due to necessary boat repairs in Ermopoli. I avoided trouble by sailing to Turkey without stamping out - thus becoming one of the 60,000 illegal migrants who crossed the Aegean Sea that year (albeit in the atypical direction). I don’t expect the other 59,999 faced much stronger consequences than I did.

But, speaking of desperate migration, there’s another completely intangible measure to ‘passport power’ which I must mention here. It was revealed to me on a recent flight from Tirana to Rome.

Passport Glory

Albania is one of the poorest countries in Europe and not in the EU. After their ghastly communist regime fell, they broke records for migration numbers. A third of native Albanians now live abroad. Britain is seen as the prime destination for those of a particular entrepreneurial spirit but, for honest hard workers, Italy is good enough.

So I arrived at Rome Airport with a planeload of perfectly nice Albanians whose demeanour, patience and queue discipline was nothing that any Italian could complain about.

There were also a few Italians on the flight - easily identified by their brighter clothing and slightly superior bearing. They were ushered through the ‘EU EEA’ passport control kiosk while the rest of us shuffled slowly forward in the ‘Non-UE altre paese' queue.

The minutes ticked by. The woman at the front of our queue carried a baby on each hip and appeared to be having difficulty explaining that her children, too, had a right to enter Italy. This was the last inbound flight that evening and the passport control chaps couldn’t knock off their shift until they had cleared everyone through customs. Having processed the Italians, they then started to find ways to use the redundant second desk. A Capo came up the line.

‘Qualcuno con un permesso di soggiorno o un permesso di soggiorno?’

A few dozen Albanians with settled status in Italy were now allowed into the fast queue.

Sheep separated from Goats, the ‘Non-UE altre paese' queue shuffled forward chastened, I sensed, by a collective sense of inferior ‘passport power.’ Now a bricklayer at the front was trying to provide evidence of employment. The fast queue had again diminished and the Capo was coming back up the line.

‘Sposi Italiani?’

The husbands and wives of Italian citizens were now ducked under the barrier, leaving me standing among a crowd who were, shall we say, Albanian even by the standards of Albanians: about fifty people of shaky, unsettled, status awaiting judgment in the hope of being cleared into a world of manual labour under the harsh Etruscan sun. And me - clean shaven in a Barbour jacket.

The Capo was coming back up the line for a third time, his eye fixed on the anomaly. Had a white Rajah slipped in among the aboriginals? Perhaps he spied the burgundy back cover of my pre-Brexit passport, because he now addressed me, sotto voce, in person

‘Ma lei Italiano?’

My neighbours also showed curiosity. The moment had arrived to flex the transcendent ‘power’ of the UK passport. Mustering all the camp indignation I could, I flourished the embossed Lion and Unicorn crest at him declaring:

‘No, cavaliere! Sono Britannico!

I would be lying if I reported that my flat-capped and Shayla’d queue-mates burst into applause, but it seemed as if the collective dignity of the ‘Non-UE altre-paese’ queue had, in that moment, risen considerably. Don Brexite stood firm in solidarity among his fellow pilgrims - Laurence of Albania, Drake of Dürres - and felt a stirring of the crowd which, in 52% of British hearts on June 23rd 2016, had sounded the trumpets at Jericho. Did the airport police brace their haunches just a little at the sight of our lifted spirits? Did they push me into the fast queue, for fear that the spirit of rebellion might spread to the masses?

This is the real reason I feel sorry for those who whinge about ‘Britain’s reduced status.’ They just don’t understand that power lies where men believe it lies. They should ask not what their 'passport power' can do for them, but what their 'passport power' can do for the spirits of a hundred depressed Albanians in an airport queue at midnight. Then they might realise not only what 'passport power' really is, but what it is to stand as a senior member of the great European family.

Alexander Shaw

Journalist