BBC Environment Correspondent Robert Pigott reports from Helsingborg in Sweden

At present anyone bringing their animal into the country is forced to wait for six months before they see their pet again.

Campaigners say countries such as Sweden are showing a lead with a system of passports for pets.

Swedish dogs now get a passport for foreign trips

Sweden's coast features some of the world's biggest passenger ports, including Helsingborg where boats leave for Denmark on the second busiest ferry route in the world.

Fifteen million people travel each year, and since the passport scheme was introduced in 1994, more than 10,000 dogs and cats enter Sweden each year through this port alone.

Helena Gabriel who is Swedish but lives in Austria is one of those with a four-legged companion.

Dogs are now a common sight at Helsingborg's port

Until quarantine was ended it was impossible for her to own a dog and move regularly between the two countries.

She urged the British government to follow Sweden's lead: "The English are a very animal-loving people and I think more people would come to England if they knew they could take their animals."

If Britain does end quarantine, then the passport system will probably replace it.

It applies only to pets from other European Union countries, and animals are still checked and vaccinated four months after they enter the country.

The microchip is small ....

Each pet is then fitted with a microchip beneath its skin and the number recorded on its passport.

The documentation costs £30 a year, while the vaccination and chip are a one-off £250.

A tattoo can also be fitted on the pet's ear, yet critics of the Swedish system say it cannot guarantee total prevention of rabies.

.... and simple for a vet to insert

Torkel Falk, a vet at Helsingborg's Animal Hospital fears an "increased risk of disease coming into Sweden."

He admitted: "It's marginal but still I think one day we will have our first case of rabies, because of the pressure from all of Europe."

Other people fear that smuggling is more likely since bringing an animal through a Swedish port is now common enough for it to pass unnoticed.

However the country's government believes with Sweden's long coastline impossible to patrol fully, smuggling was more likely under the old system.

A computer checks the chip at passport control

Pia Tornqvist from the Ministry of Agriculture pointed out: "You can take a boat at night, go somewhere else and if you want to commit a crime then no-one can prevent you."

She insisted: "Most people want to do the right thing."

In Britain a special government inquiry is considering whether people can be trusted to follow stringently the safeguards necessary for such a scheme.

Any relaxation would inevitably result in a big increase in the numbers of international animals.

But despite this in four years of operation in Sweden the system appears to have been as successful as the inconvenient quarantine laws in preventing rabies from getting through.