I happen to be a frequent traveler to EU. Several times every year. Business and recreation. Being a physically challenged person, I mostly travel by car. Therefore, I am a frequent visitor on the border customs. I do not have too many words (that wouldn’t be in French) to describe the situation on these customs. Enough to say that you can easily spend up to 6 hours in a waiting queue. Not to mention the customs officers who are a complete disaster. Highly unprofessional and lazy people.
However, back to the queue – I always have to negotiate with either people in the line or officers to jump the queue. I am jumping not because I am not polite rather because I have physiological problems waiting for hours. It can result in severe problems with my health not to go too deep into the details. Need I say that the customs officers do not care? “There is no law allowing you to jump the queue” is the usual answer.
Now how come there is no particular law? Wouldn’t it be natural to ensure that persons with disabilities, pregnant women and travelers with kids below three years should be allowed to go without the queue on a separate terminal? Can you imagine one y/o child (or two) waiting in a car for three hours? Are we talking about EU customs?
On the other hand why not create separate VIP terminals where you could officially pay EUR 100 or 200 to go through this VIP passage. Same check-ups and customs procedures but without the queue. This type of service works well for airports why not here? It would also be a good source of money for the customs to be spent on the modernization and enhancing the infrastructure.
This way or another system does not work at present and compromises image of the EU border countries big way. Plus it does not make much sense, and it is a very outdated system that goes in direct disagreement with the current trends of EU legislation.
