Passport control

My letter of May 29 about my experience with an immigration official at Heathrow airport created an interest among readers and prompted a few to express an opinion. One reader from Marsascala was amused and described my letter as pompous. The one that takes the biscuit is the letter by Andrew P. Flinn from Fife who stated that my letter shows that I am literally ignorant, arrogant and rather silly. Mr Flinn also went through the trouble of giving me a lecture on the workings of the Schengen Treaty as if one needs to visit 10 countries in a year to know of its existence

The salient feature of my letter was that all EU states must accept an EU national's ID document as proof of identity. The matter of borders was put as a question mark while the rest were my impressions on which I requested clarifications.

On June 3, Edward Demicoli from the EC Representation reacted to my letter and declared that the Heathrow official was correct in asking for my passport as the UK is not a Schengen country. Reading such a statement from an official source surprised me to state the least.

On June 7, Mr Demicoli put pen to paper again on the subject but this time to correct his first erroneous statement. The official interpretation now reads thus: "The Heathrow Airport immigration official was correct in asking for Mr Buttigieg's passport or ID Card as the UK is not a Schengen territory". This exactly was my point however the immigration official initially refused my ID document and insisted on seeing my passport.

Furthermore, Mr Demicoli clarified that all EU citizens travelling within the EU25 zone, whether Schengen or not, have the option to produce either their ID card or their passport when asked for identification by immigration officials.

The clarifications by the European Commission Representation vindicated the point of my argument, however I will not stoop so low as to retaliate and reciprocate the adjectives which Mr Flinn attributed to me.