Nine EU States Win More Time on New Border Checks

Nine European Union countries have won a further delay to the rollout of the bloc's new biometric border checks, the Guardian reported on Monday, with France and Greece among the governments asking for more time to install the system at busy airports. Italy was named among the states covered by the postponement, according to the same report. The Entry/Exit System, known as EES, is designed to register non-EU visitors' fingerprints and facial images at the point of first entry into the Schengen area.

The Guardian's account frames the delay as a practical concession: holiday hotspots pleaded for additional time to implement the changes without crippling passenger flows during peak periods. The paper links the decision to its earlier explainer on what the EES is and how it affects visitors to EU nations. The postponement is the latest in a sequence of slippages for a system that has been years in preparation.