Nine EU States Win More Time on Border Checks as Italy Joins the Delay

Nine European Union countries have secured a further postponement of the bloc's new entry-exit system (EES), the Guardian reported on Monday, with France, Greece, Portugal and Italy among the states asking Brussels for more time to bring the biometric border checks into service at airports already stretched by summer traffic. The EES is designed to register non-EU visitors' fingerprints and facial images at the point of crossing, replacing passport stamping.

The delay is the latest in a series for a programme that has slipped repeatedly since it was first scheduled. Holiday hotspots, the Guardian notes, argued that rolling out the kiosks and registration lanes during peak season risked queues and confusion for travellers who have not yet been enrolled.

For a country such as Italy, whose airports at Rome, Milan and the smaller regional fields handle a heavy share of non-EU arrivals, the practical question is staffing and space rather than principle. The Guardian's account frames the request as operational, not political: governments say they support the system but need the calendar to fit the terminals.

The EES sits alongside the EU's planned European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS), and both have become fixtures of the bloc's external-border agenda. The Guardian's report centres on the member states' request for breathing room rather than any move to abandon the scheme, and it names France, Greece, Portugal and Italy among those seeking the extension.

The Local Italy, reporting separately on Monday, noted that the European Commission is also weighing a revision of Schengen rules on short-stay visas and fees, describing the aim as making visa policy "more coherent, secure and effective, while facilitating legitimate travel." The two items point in the same direction: Brussels is reviewing the machinery of legal entry into the bloc at the same moment it is being asked to slow the rollout of the new checks.

The Commission has not, in the coverage cited here, set a firm revised date, and the Guardian does not report one. What the reporting establishes is the sequence — repeated slippage, member-state requests tied to airport capacity, and a Commission willing to accommodate them — rather than a final timetable.

The regional stake is straightforward and stated in the sourcing rather than inferred. Italy is named as one of the delaying states, and its busiest gateways are the airports where the checks must be installed. Beyond that, the sources do not describe effects on any particular Italian region or airport, and this dispatch does not assert any.