Do I really need 15 months on my passport for Greece?

Have a question? Ask our expert Simon Calder

Don’t let paperwork spoil your trip to the Aegean (Getty/iStock)

Q I am going on holiday to Greece in July this year and am concerned about passport validity if we leave the EU with no deal on 29 March. Looking at the passport requirements it appears that 15 months’ validity will be required for Greece. This does not appear to be in line with other EU countries which require only six months. Can you explain why there is this difference?

Norman H

A Thank you for getting in touch. Sorry to hear about your concerns. They are perfectly understandable, given the confusion surrounding this subject – some of it provided by inaccurate messages by the British government. Please take no notice of blanket statements by the Home Office such as the online advertisements it is issuing saying: “In the event of a no-deal Brexit you’ll need at least six months left on your passport from the start of your trip.” For many non-EU countries (eg the US, Japan, Australia) you will not. But for all European Union nations except Ireland, you could need much more validity on your passport.

UK passports are unlike those issued in the rest of the European Union (and the world) in one key respect: many of them are valid for up to 10 years and nine months, rather than the normal 10 years. The difference is the generous (and now abandoned) policy of providing additional validity for up to nine months of unexpired time on the old passport. For example, my passport was issued on 12 March 2013 and expires on 12 November 2023 – 10 years and eight months later.

This is fine for as long as the UK remains part of the EU. But as soon as Britain leaves and becomes a “third country”, different rules apply. Passports are deemed to have expired 10 years after issue, even though they appear to have many months to run. Add to this the UK government’s advice to have at least six months of validity (as defined by the EU) remaining on the day you apply for entry to the European Union, and some passports will cease to be acceptable when they are 14 months and 29 days short of their apparent expiry date.

So I hope that explains the difference. The next question is: what should you do? If your passport will have been valid by more than nine years and six months on the day you plan to arrive in Greece, I urge you to apply for a replacement now. As Brexit Day approaches with no sign of certainty, I foresee more and more people seeking to renew passports – potentially extending processing times.

Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder