Whether we stay or go: pet travel and what you need to know

The Pet Travel Scheme (PETS) was introduced by the European Parliament in 2000 to allow the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Finland and Malta to apply stricter travel controls than the rest of the EU, in order to protect against the importation of rabies, exotic ticks and Echinococcus multilocularis tapeworm. The biggest change to PETS since its introduction happened in January 2012 when the UK aligned their pet travel rules with the rest of the EU. This included:

Statistics from DEFRA state that the number of dogs entering the UK under the new rules rose by over 60% in the first year. However, evidence also showed that the importation of dogs from Eastern European countries Hungary and Lithuania increased by 663% and 780% respectively between 2011 and 2013. This suggests that the PETS system was being abused by commercial dealers in Eastern Europe to illegally import puppies for sale into the UK. Despite only 2.5% of pets being found to be officially non-compliant with the new PETS rules in 2012, these figures do not represent how many animals passed through customs undetected with false passports and they also do not take into account any non-declared pets smuggled into the country (Dogs Trust, 2014).