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.

The Entry/Exit System is a European Union project, not an Italian one, and the delay is a collective request by the states concerned. The Guardian reports that France, Greece, Portugal and Italy are among those asking for latitude on implementation, with the pressure concentrated at airports rather than at land or sea crossings. For a country whose tourism economy is built on summer arrivals, the timing matters: the system is designed to be introduced across the Schengen area, and any state that lags creates friction for the others.

The delay sits alongside a second piece of Brussels housekeeping. The European Commission is weighing a revision of the Schengen short-stay visa rules and fees, according to The Local Italy, with the stated aim of making visa policy more coherent, secure and effective while still facilitating legitimate travel. Taken together, the two items describe a Schengen area trying to tighten its external register without choking the traffic that pays for it.

For the Marche, the practical stake is smaller than for Rome or Venice but not negligible. Ancona's Raffaello Sanzio airport handles a modest flow of international traffic, and the region's coastal season leans on visitors who arrive through larger hubs and then drive or take the train down the Adriatic. When the hubs slow, the districts behind them feel it in restaurant covers and hotel nights rather than in the terminal itself.

The wire does not say when the nine states will now be expected to comply, nor whether the Commission has accepted a formal timetable. The Guardian's account is a report of the request and the reasons behind it; the operational detail is still to be settled in Brussels.