Nine EU States Push Back the New Border Checks, and the Brenner Watches

Nine European Union countries have further delayed the introduction of the bloc's new Entry/Exit System, the Guardian reported on Monday, with holiday destinations including France, Greece and Portugal asking for more time to install the checks at busy airports. The EES is designed to register short-stay visitors from outside the EU, replacing passport stamps with biometric records at external borders. The Guardian listed Italy among the countries seeking the delay.

The Brenner Pass and the Reschen route are the main road gateways from Austria into Trentino-Alto Adige, and they sit on the same Schengen border as the airports the Guardian describes. The report concerns the external frontier of the union, so the delay it describes applies to airports and ports rather than to the internal Alpine crossings; the wire does not claim otherwise, and the distinction matters for anyone reading it from Bolzano or Trento. What the Guardian does establish is that the machinery for registering travellers is not ready on schedule, and that Italy is among the states that said so.