Hopes have been raised that an agreement can be reached to allow British passport holders to use e-gates when travelling though EU airports.
The Guardian reported Bloomberg News as saying that British diplomats had raised the issue informally.
A potential discussion was foreseen on the sidelines of a meeting in Japan which the prime minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, will attend in June.
Such a deal would help ease passport queues at airports but do little to speed up border crossing checks at Dover or Folkestone, where cross channel travellers have endured long delays to catch ferries.
French police at the Port of Dover and at Eurotunnel in Folkestone will still need to physically check stamps on passports to ensure compliance with post-Brexit limits on the number of days British tourists are eligible to stay in EU countries on the continent.
However, Eurotunnel and ports have been more concerned about the introduction of new rules in Europe which will require facial scanning of passport holders, already used in many airports.
They fear this will cause chronic queueing on roads in Kent, as it will require drivers and each passenger to get out of their car to be scanned.
Most of the car-based traffic is controlled manually, with only a handful of e-gates available in coach halls and no room to expand, a source at Eurotunnel reportedly said.
Under EU plans due to be implemented in 2024, citizens from the UK and other “third-country” nationals could have their biometric data taken to obtain a visa waiver.
But the UK government is worried this will not end delays and is looking for full access to the bloc’s e-gates, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The EU plans to introduce two separate but related entry systems later this year and in 2024.
The EU’s Entry/Exit System (EES) is due to be introduced at the end of the year and will involve automatic registration of visitors from non-EU countries each time they cross a border.
The biggest concern is the enrolment of EES, where customers’ biometrics – including face and fingerprint scans – and biographical details including name, address, reason for travel and accommodation plans are captured at the first point of entry, either at an airport or at the French police portals at Dover and Folkestone.
“The issues are around the technology proposed by the EU and the roles for carriers and border officers,” a Eurotunnel source reportedly said.
“E-gates could be useful, but only once someone is enrolled and, even so, in one vehicle you could have a mixture of nationalities and statuses, so some might still need to be controlled by a border officer.”
The European Commission has said it is looking at introducing the system in a gradual and flexible way to avoid long waiting times at crating border crossings.