So has anyone done inter-EU flight changes on their way out of the EU? How much hassle is it? For example is there a customs bags check, any legal requirements, or other issues? How time consuming?

Namely I want to do a London -> France -> US routing. But if going into France for less than three hours will be a huge hassle then I just won't waste my time. I wouldn't for example want a full bag search and have to pay duty to bring stuff into France just for a routing.

If your luggage is checked through then all you have to deal with is a security check

Can they check luggage though inter-EU? Or will I have to pick it up and re-check it in, like crossing other international boarders?

It can be checked through to your destination, don't worry.

No, you don't have to pick it up and re-check it.

Thanks for the information. I just wasn't sure if inter-EU was like inter-US or more like jumping between unique countries.

No, it should be fine. Your luggage can normally be checked through. (And even if not, the EU is a customs union and so no customs checks would normally be made between the UK and France.) Because the UK is not in the Schengen area and France is, you will not need to clear exit immigration control in France since you will remain as an "international" passenger in transit. You might have to go through passport control on leaving the UK (sometimes you do, sometimes you don't, and it's difficult to predict) but of course that won't affect your transfer time when changing planes in France.

The whole pick-up-your-bags-and-recheck-them idiocy that they have in the US doesn't exist in the EU. We have a much nicer system to deal with international passengers arriving on intra-eu flights:

If you depart from a Schengen country, your bag tags will have a green lining (this is randomly applied to non-schengen flights as well depending on what paper they load, but they'll always be there on flights to schengen countries). If your bag has a green-lined tag, you can walk through a customs 'blue zone' if it exists, which means you can just walk through and no one will hassle you for stuff you might be carrying because it's all fine. If you don't, you get to do the normal pick between 'nothing to declare', and 'items to declare' depending on which category you fall into. Of course the green bag tags will signal anyone watching that you have nothing to declare anyway so most countries don't have a blue zone. Trying to go through the blue zone without green-lined tags is a recipe for having your stuff looked into of course.

The US doesn't have such a clever system, so they require everyone to pick up their bags, go through customs, and recheck them.


That all said, your bags won't have these lines because the UK did not sign the Schengen treaty. But because we have this wonderful system combined with airports that can actually keep apart international and schengen passengers (another thing the US lacks), you won't have to jump through any ridiculous hoops.

The UK does use the green bag tags for intra-EU flights, which is an EU thing rather than a Schengen thing.

But the OP's bags won't be tagged in this way because the bags are not intra-EU; they're going EU to outside the EU.

But in any case, the OP shouldn't be troubled by them in France.

Uh, right. Messed up on that part. You're correct, the green tags are a customs thing and schengen is immigration.
They likely still will be tagged this way because he's going through france first, which means there's the possibility of having to leave the airport so he'd need them.

That could be right.

Just as an aside, I have never understood why they decided on green bag tags for the blue channel. I can understand why they didn't make the EU channel "green" because the world over the green channel means "nothing to declare", whereas intra-EU travel is without customs, since the EU is a customs union. But why not make the tags blue, like the blue channel?

Blue is the colour of the EU flag, together opviously with yellow.

They probably use green because it's easier to see. The human eye is more sensitive to green than it is to red and blue. Which is important if you want your customs officers to easily recognise the green bands. Apart from that, it's also the universal colour for 'safe', or 'no need to inspect'.

But in the US, not every domestic airport has customs.

Also, I think it would be sensitive to have baggage that needs to be cleared mixed with baggage that doesn't need to be cleared, as a domestic passenger could switch contents with an international passenger. In addition, I bet domestic passengers would be upset if a customs officer pulled them over just to verify that they were indeed domestic passengers. (I'd tell them to shove it in this situation and mind their own business.)

I could see drugs and other items smuggled into the US if baggage were to be mixed.

He'd have the wrong tags, though. And switching actual contents from bag to bag with another person before exiting the customs controlled area is going to get you a search with 100% certainty. We do know what suspicious behaviour is, and that's about at the top of the list.

How come this problem doesn't exist in the EU, then? Most drug smuggling here is done outside of airports because it's cheaper and there's less risk of being caught. And then most airport-based smuggling is done by swallowing rather than carrying in luggage.

What I find far worse than any possibility of smuggling (honestly I could care less about someone trying to sell drugs to people who like taking it) is that in all US airports that I've used, domestic arrival baggage is publicly accessible. That is, you can walk into the airport and take a random person's luggage home with you. In theory they should be checking if your luggage tags match up, but I've never seen anyone do that. Here at AMS (for instance, but this is common), your luggage always arrives in the arrival hall which is only accessible to those coming from a flight. It's still not perfect of course (perfect security doesn't exist, and attempting to achieve it will bankrupt you) but it's at least a lot better already.

If the OP is checking his bags from the UK to the US then the airport code on the tag will be that of his final destination and his tag will not have a green border because he will not be retrieving his baggage anywhere in the EU.

He would only be given tags with a green border if he asked for his bags to be tagged to Paris only (for example, if he wants to retrieve them during a stopover).