ETIAS

ETIAS—European Travel Information and Authorization System.

You may have seen this acronym floating around the internet in the past few months, with some stories that make it seem like traveling to Europe is going to get a lot more challenging beginning in 2024. For over 60 visa-exempt countries, this document will now be required to travel to 30 European countries. There is an official website that explains what the program is, what is required to obtain a valid ETIAS travel authorization, how much it costs, how long it is valid for, and many other questions that may be unique to you. 

As of September 2023, the official website is full of good information, but it not accepting applications yet. The application requires more personal information than a typical US passport application, and includes your level of education and current occupation, details about your trip, and information about past criminal activity, any past travel to war or conflict zones and whether you have recently received a decision that required you to leave the territory of any country. You may need to provide documents to support your application information. 

Currently, the stated cost of the ETIAS application is EUR 7. If you are younger than 18 or older than 70, you are exempt from this fee. Once you have received approval, your ETIAS travel authorization is valid for 3 years, or until your passport expires, whichever comes first. The typical turnaround time for approval is usually within a few minutes, but may take up to 30 days. The recommendation from the ETIAS website is to get your approval before booking nonrefundable travel. 

There is much more information on the ETIAS website, and we encourage you to visit it, especially if you have travel planned to one of the 30 countries in the first few months of 2024. You will find many sites that are not affiliated with ETIAS that will fill out this application for you, but they will charge you for their services. If you feel like your situation is straightforward, we recommend that you just fill out your application yourself. 

Although this may seem like a lot more work, it really doesn’t appear to be remarkably time-consuming and the intent is to make travel safer for all of us. For a few minutes of your time and EUR 7, you will then be ready for travel to the Schengen area (and a scattering of other countries in Europe) for the next 3 years. Safe travels!