Nine EU States Delay Digital Border Checks, and Rome Watches the Clock

Nine European Union countries have secured another delay to the rollout of the Entry/Exit System, the digital border regime meant to replace passport stamping for non-EU visitors, according to the Guardian. France, Greece, Portugal and Italy are among the states that asked Brussels for more time to install the system in airports that are already stretched, the paper reported on Monday.

The EES is designed to register the fingerprints and facial images of short-stay travellers from outside the bloc, replacing the manual stamping of passports at external Schengen borders. Its introduction has already slipped more than once, and the latest delay reflects the same complaint each time: the hardware, the staffing and the terminal space are not yet in place at the points where the queues are longest.

For Italy, the pressure point is the same as elsewhere in the Mediterranean: the airports that handle the largest volumes of non-EU arrivals, and the seaports that take cruise and ferry traffic. Rome's two commercial airports, Fiumicino and Ciampino, sit on that list, and the delay gives the border police and airport operators a further window to fit the kiosks and the staff rota the system requires.