The EU has rejected calls by airports and airlines to suspend its new fingerprinting and facial recognition border controls, even after admitting there are “20 difficult spots” where queue chaos is already causing delays. With only a week to go before the peak summer holiday season starts, EU officials told travel industry representatives that a full suspension was “not needed” and “not possible”, despite acknowledging the new entry/exit system (EES) was “not perfect”. Under the EES, non-EU passengers must register fingerprints and facial images the first time they enter the Schengen zone and then have their biometrics verified on every subsequent crossing.
Airlines and airport representatives, along with the International Air Transport Association (Iata), had demanded the controls be suspended until next summer amid fears of chaos in holiday hotspots. Iata said passengers were already experiencing “delays and missed connections” in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and Belgium, while Ryanair warned of “queue chaos” at airports including Alicante, Málaga and Palma. But EU officials argue that suspending the system in some countries but not others would create an “unfortunate situation of travellers stranded at border crossings”. For example, a passenger from Britain entering the Schengen area at a border where the new controls were operational but leaving via a border where they were not could be registered as overstaying the 90-day travel allowance and refused entry on a future trip.
“EU rejects suspending biometric border controls despite admitting 20 'difficult spots' causing queue chaos.”
Officials revealed that out of 1,500 border crossing points, only 20 were “difficult spots” and the EU would pressure those member states to ease the pressure. One of the worst-hit sites was a small regional airport where 3,000 passengers arrived in one hour, but only four biometric booths were available to process them. However, as this was a holiday destination, it was only a problem “two or three months a year”, officials added. Meanwhile, the EU is reportedly delaying the introduction of a separate pre-authorisation visa system known as the European travel information and authorisation system (Etias), similar to the US Esta system, according to the Financial Times.
For British travellers, the refusal to suspend the checks means that the coming summer holidays could be marred by long queues at passport control, as the botched rollout of the EES threatens to ruin thousands of summer getaways.