Travelling with your ID card

Mr Benny Zaffarese writes:
On Monday, August 14, I departed to Munich for my holidays with my family.
I was amazed, when I arrived at the airport immigration point, that my passport and all my family's passports were scrutinised and stamped even though I insisted with the immigration officer that he was depriving me and my family of my liberty to enter freely and not treating us as EU citizens. He insisted that the passport will be stamped and informed me that I cannot stay more than three months in the country. He insisted that we do not have the same benefits as other EU citizens.
I told him that I will take the case to an MEP in Malta and he replied that that does not bother him and started laughing with the other officer in the cubicle and tried to ridicule us for objecting.
I appreciate if you could advise me why Maltese need to have their passport stamped while other EU citizens arriving in Malta come in with just an ID card. I would also like you to advise me on what action I should take if this was against EU rules and what remedies I should seek to obtain an apology from them.

First of all, EU law states that, as an EU citizen, you have the right to enter another EU country using either a passport or an identity card. This has to be clear.

This means that, if you present your identity card, it should be accepted and you should be allowed entry. And if you present your passport, this should not be stamped.

By the end of next year, we should also be joining the so-called Schengen area and you will be able to travel to Schengen countries without going through immigration controls and without requiring to have your passport or identity card checked. For obvious identification purposes, however, an identification document will still be required at check-in and at the gate.

Now it is true that there have been cases where Maltese travellers presenting their identity card have been asked for their passport. I myself have received a number of complaints this summer about similar cases, involving airports ranging from Munich to Lyon to London.

In all fairness, there may be some mitigating circumstance.

For instance, one should not be surprised that, following the alarm that we had in London this summer, immigration authorities in London as well as in other airports stepped up their security controls.

One must also bear in mind that when queuing at immigration controls (where travel documents are checked) one has to proceed to the desk reserved for EU nationals. If one walks to the desk for non-EU nationals, then one should not be surprised if one gets one's passport stamped since immigration officers in that desk would be working on non-EU passports and required to stamp them.

Nor should one assume that the Maltese identity is never accepted. As a rule, our identity card is accepted in EU airports and these cases are the exception, not the rule.

Yet, I do appreciate that the fact that these sort of incidents arise from time to time introduce doubts in people's minds as to whether they are sufficiently covered if they simply travel with their identity card.

To be sure, it does not take much to carry one's passport as well as one's identity card. Ideally one should carry both documents in different pockets, just in case one of them goes missing. This would avoid the ordeal of having to obtain a new travelling document when abroad.

But of course that is besides the point. And this is more a question of asserting one's own rights and of being treated equally to others.

So the answer should not be to give up one's right but to have them respected. And I do admire this reader for making it a point to speak up for himself and his family.

In his particular case, I will certainly write to the immigration authorities in Munich airport to complain about this incident and I will correspond with the reader directly about the matter.

More generally, however, I will be submitting a Parliamentary Question to the European Commission to bring this matter to its attention and to call upon it to ensure that identity cards are accepted in all airports so that EU rights on travelling documents are adequately respected for all EU citizens equally.

The Commission should also ensure that all immigration officers in EU airports are, as a minimum, aware that in 2004 the EU enlarged from 15 to 25 countries.

Readers who would like to ask questions to be answered in this column can send an e-mail, identifying themselves, to contact@simonbusuttil.eu or through www.simonbusuttil.eu .