The time required to hold a passport in Italy has increased significantly in the past few months, according to local media reports, while the same stressed that in some cities it is impossible to make an appointment with the offices responsible for such a document.
According to the Italian Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, the reasons that led to these problems are various while travel agencies are reporting inconvenience for the tourism industry, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
“The increase in requests for the issuance of electronic passports was determined by a plurality of causes, some contingent, such as the end of post covid restrictions, others of a structural nature, such as Brexit and, again, due to the difficulty, especially in the most populous municipalities, of obtaining an identity card quickly, with the consequence that the passport is required not only for the purposes of expatriation but also to have an identity document,” the Minister pointed out in this regard.
In this regard, a recent survey conducted by Italian Travel Agencies revealed that the current passport situation led to a 96.5 per cent decrease in bookings or about 13 thousand euros per agency in smoke.
The passport chaos caused significant damage to the travel and tourism sector, while the agency said that about 80,000 trips have been destroyed thus causing about 150 million euros in lost sales for the Italian travel agency system.
It has been reported that about 96.5 per cent of the agencies reported problems related to the association, stressing that they had seen a notable increase from just over two to more than five the weeks needed to make an appointment in order to hold a passport.
Regarding the issue, the National President of Assoviaggi, Gianni Rebecchi, has considered that it is a disservice to citizenship, stressing that the passport is not only required for going on vacation but also for family reunification, for children who do not have one and for other purposes.
Rebecchi said that it is not a question of business but also of the right to freedom of movement outside the borders of European countries.
Still, he added that it is undeniable that the problem has a significant impact on the tourism sector, more specifically in the year of the restart after the long ban imposed by the Coronavirus where Italy was the last European country to abolish travel restrictions and other bans imposed to halt the spread of the virus and its new variants.
