Nine EU States Push Back the EU's New Border Checks, and Italy Is Among Them

Nine European Union countries have secured another delay to the bloc's new biometric border system, the Guardian reported on Monday, with holiday hotspots including France, Greece, Portugal and Italy asking for more time to bring the Entry/Exit System into service at busy airports. The EES replaces passport stamping with the electronic registration of fingerprints and facial images for short-stay visitors from outside the EU, and its rollout has already slipped more than once.

The Guardian frames the request as a plea from governments whose terminals cannot absorb the extra processing time in peak season. The paper notes that the countries involved are those where airports handle the heaviest volumes of non-EU arrivals, which is precisely where a slower desk translates into queues that spill back through the terminal.