yeah, but I got the impression that the EU is very much doing it as a retaliation to the US and UK doing it. Tho they could have limited it to just those countries.
The US, maybe. But wiki suggests ETIAS (the EU one) was proposed in 2016 whereas the UK ETA idea was created around 2023, so ETIAS can't be a reaction to ETA - perhaps the other way round?
I'm not sure if, without Brexit, the UK would have ended up with ETIAS anyway - it's a "mostly Schengen but not exactly" thing so it would have depended on what agreement they came to.
My impression was that the EU did it to prevent people doing visa-free layovers from claiming asylum, while the UK did it to negotiate a dual exception with the EU in the future.
ETA is a visa to the entire world in all but name. I'm not looking forward to the future where every county implements is and visa-free travel becomes a thing of the past.
I wish countries would stop trying to be cute with names like ESTA, KETA, ETA, etc and call it what it is: an evisa. These countries lie and say "don't worry bro you don't need a visa bro. Just ride that plane bro. it's free bro.", then you find out there's some government portal that runs 9-5 local time five days a week (holidays off) and requires a $X fee every submission with a chance of failing for a random reason. And it can take days for a response to come.
And people will say "it's not a visa bro. You just need to upload your photo, personal info, pay a fee, and they'll get back to you in a few days to tell you whether you're allowed in." Indonesia and India have identical processes with 5 minute turnaround times. Know what they call them? E-Visas. And if you're not eligible for an evisa, you go get a normal one.
It's tedious because you search for whether a country needs a visa, and results will say "nope", but it turns out if you're from specific nationalities that get visa free travel (but not all), you don't need a visa, but you need some random application for something named with a random combination of letters. And if you don't know that specific name, a shallow search might say you're fine.
Just quit the BS. Call it an evisa. And countries that call their process evisas handle them cheaper, faster, and more easily than ESTA or whatever other scam/visa workaround other countries have.
I've never been rejected yet, but it's a pain in the ass needing to do a deep search, thinking I'm fine since no visa is required, then finding out 3 days before my flight while browsing travel forums there is some secret application I need to submit and their webpage is slow and buggy as hell.
A visa is entirely different. EU citizens of course don't need a visa to visit the UK (or the US, or Canada). The UK always had some special border shenanigans (not in the Schengen, etc etc), even for travelers with EU passports, but demanding an advance application with an associated fee is a new level of ridiculousness.
