Nine EU States Delay New Border System, and Trieste Watches

Nine European Union countries have won further postponement of the bloc's new biometric border system, the Entry/Exit System, according to the Guardian, which reported on Monday that holiday hotspots including France, Greece and Portugal had asked for more time to install the checks at busy airports. The delay concerns the register that will record the comings and goings of non-EU travellers, replacing manual passport stamping with facial and fingerprint capture at the external frontier.

The Guardian's report places Italy among the states affected by the slippage, a detail with particular weight on this region's eastern edge. Friuli-Venezia Giulia holds Italy's land frontier with Slovenia, at the Fernetti and Rabuiese crossings outside Trieste and along the Karst corridor, as well as the port itself, where passengers and trucks arrive from outside the Schengen Area.

The Entry/Exit System has been a long-running project of the European Union's border agency, Frontex, and its repeated postponements have become a familiar story for anyone travelling through the bloc's external crossings. Each delay shifts the burden onto national authorities to prepare infrastructure, staffing and software before the system goes live.

The Guardian noted that the latest reprieve was granted after governments argued that the checks would clog airports at the peak of the summer season. The paper's reporting frames the delay as a concession to the practical limits of the busiest gateways rather than a change of policy.