Nine EU States Delay New Border Checks, and Italy's Islands Wait

Nine European Union countries have further delayed implementation of the Entry/Exit System, the bloc's new biometric border regime, with holiday hotspots including France and Greece asking for more time to install it at busy airports, according to the Guardian. Italy is among the states named in the report.

The EES replaces passport stamping for short-stay visitors from outside the EU with electronic registration of fingerprints and facial images. The Guardian's coverage describes the system as a change that touches every non-EU traveller crossing an external Schengen border, and the delay as a response to the practical difficulty of processing them at speed during peak season.

The stakes are highest where arrivals are concentrated into a few weeks and a few points of entry. For Italy that means the major airports and, in the case of the islands, the ferry ports and the seasonal air routes that carry the summer trade. The Guardian frames the delay as an admission that the infrastructure is not ready; the question for a region like Sardinia is what readiness would even look like at a port that handles thousands of passengers in a single turnaround.