EU citizens banned from using ID cards to enter UK after rising terrorism and crime concerns

EU citizens will be banned from using ID cards to enter the UK from October because they are so easy to fake they are being widely used by terrorists, criminals and illegal immigrants to enter the country.

Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is using Brexit to change the rules so that EU ID cards can no longer be used as travel documents, and instead visiting EU nationals will have to present passports at UK borders.

It comes amid growing concern about the proliferation of fake European IDs, which have been used by jihadis, rapists, thieves and benefit fraudsters.

A Home Office source said: “These documents are some of the most insecure and abused documents seen at the border and we know that they are used by organised crime groups.”

Thousands have used them to enter the UK, with Italian and Greek documents most susceptible because they are paper-based, more easily forged, and on sale for £800 on the black market.

Albanian Fatmira Tafa was jailed for 14 months last year for using a fake Greek ID to get a kidney transplant that cost the NHS more than £72,000.

Islamic State terrorists behind the Paris and Brussels atrocities used “top quality” counterfeit EU ID cards to travel freely around the continent planning their carnage. Najim Laachraoui, one of the Brussels Airport suicide bombers who killed 32, had an ID card from a counterfeit documents factory.

The EU border agency Frontex said more than 7,000 people were detected trying to enter the bloc using fraudulent documents in 2016 – with most found trying to get into the UK. 

Albanian and Ukrainian nationals using fake Italian and Greek ID cards are the main offenders caught at UK borders.

“Smugglers frequently provide migrants with fraudulent travel and identity documents as a part of their 'services',” Frontex said in its annual report.

“Both the quantity and the quality of the fraudulent documents circulating in the EU have improved over recent years. The sustained demand has prompted counterfeiters to increase their output and has also prompted the creation of new print shops.”

Europol, the European police agency, has warned that document fraud is one of the most common criminal activities linked to illegal immigration.

The move follows new rules introduced on January 1 banning foreign criminals sentenced to more than a year in jail from entering the UK.

From July this year, UK border force will also get advance data on all goods from the EU which will boost their ability to target suspected illegal imports of guns and drugs.

It also emerged on Wednesday that police and crime agencies had been forced to destroy 40,000 alerts of criminals wanted for arrest or extradition after being excluded from the EU’s so-called SIS II intelligence database.