Nine EU States Delay EES Border Checks Again, and the Ports Ask Who Pays

Nine European Union countries have secured a further delay to the roll-out of the Entry/Exit System, the biometric border regime meant to register non-EU visitors, according to the Guardian. France, Greece and Italy are among the states that asked Brussels for more time, arguing that busy airports could not absorb the new checks without queues spilling into terminals. The Guardian reported the delay on Monday, describing holiday hotspots pleading for slack in the implementation timetable.

The EES replaces manual passport stamping with facial and fingerprint enrolment for third-country nationals entering the Schengen area. It was designed to be introduced across the bloc at once, but the Guardian notes the schedule has slipped repeatedly as member states test equipment and train staff. The countries named are those with the heaviest seasonal traffic, which is precisely why their border posts were the least able to absorb a bad first week.

For Liguria, the practical question is not the airport but the ferry berth. Genoa and Savona handle large volumes of passengers crossing to and from Tunisia, Morocco and Spain, and those flows arrive in surges keyed to a sailing timetable rather than a flight schedule. A delay in the EES timetable buys the terminals time, but it does not answer the underlying arithmetic: enrol every passenger at the foot of a gangway and a 22:00 sailing becomes a 23:30 sailing.