Nine EU States Delay New Border System, and Italy's Ports Wait Again

Nine European Union countries have secured another delay to the rollout of the bloc's Entry/Exit System, the biometric border regime designed to register non-EU travellers entering and leaving the Schengen area, according to the Guardian. France, Greece, Portugal and Italy are among the holiday hotspots that asked Brussels for more time to implement the changes at busy airports.

The EES was conceived as a replacement for passport stamping, recording fingerprints and facial images for short-stay visitors from outside the union. Its introduction has already slipped several times. The Guardian reports that the latest postponement reflects pressure from member states whose airports, ferry terminals and land crossings would bear the immediate operational burden.

For Italy the delay lands on a familiar fault line: the country sits on the Mediterranean edge of Schengen, where tourist arrivals, cruise traffic and cross-border road movement converge. The same infrastructure that would absorb EES registration is also the infrastructure that customs, police and airport operators have warned is stretched in peak season.