Regulation Checked 10 September 2026 EU law text. Source
Which instrument sets it
This is the part that decides whether a source is current. The 2018 regulation set a fee. A later delegated act substituted a new amount into the same article, leaving the rest of the article alone. So there are two live documents, one amending the other, and reading only the first gives you a number that has not been operative for some time.
That is why the fee on this site cites the amending act rather than the original. It is also a serviceable test of any other page you read on this subject: check which instrument it cites. A page citing only the 2018 regulation for a fee is quoting text that has been replaced, and a surprising number still do.
What the change did not touch
The delegated act replaced one paragraph. The exemptions in the following paragraph were untouched, so Applicants under 18 years or above 70 years of age at the time of the application. That remains an exemption from payment and not from the requirement to hold an authorisation, a distinction the fee coverage frequently loses.
A third exemption exists as well, for family members of EU nationals who meet the conditions for that status. The legacy version of this site listed only the two age bands and missed it. All three are on the fee and who will be exempt.
Why an old fee survives so well
Because the original figure was in circulation for years before the change, and it was the more attractive number. It appeared in travel guides, airline notices and thousands of articles written while it was correct, and none of those were rewritten. A figure that was true for long enough develops its own momentum.
The same mechanism produces the mirror error, which is worth naming because it is the one that costs money. Sites charging travellers today point at a modest headline figure and add a service charge to it. Nobody can process an application at present in any case: ETIAS is currently not in operation and no applications for travel authorisations are collected at this point. The patterns are on avoiding ETIAS scams.
What the fee will buy
One application, checked against the relevant EU databases, producing an authorisation good for multiple entries and lasting Three years, or until the travel document used in the application expires, whichever comes first. There will be no charge per trip inside that period. It will not buy priority and it will not buy a guarantee: an approved authorisation still leaves admission to be decided at the border.
Why this entry exists at all
The legacy news page did not carry this change, while every other page on that site quoted the superseded figure. A hub that logged only what the old one logged would reproduce the gap that made the old site wrong. So the rule for this hub is developments that mattered, not developments that were previously written up.
Last verified 10 September 2026. How we verify