Pressure grows to suspend EES checks during European summer travel

Airports in Rome are considering suspending the Entry-Exit System (EES) during the summer travel season.

Marco Troncone, chief executive of Aeroporti di Roma (ADR), warned on Thursday that allowing passengers to skip the biometric border registration scheme was the only way to avoid a “disaster” in the coming weeks.

“We are very worried for the summer,” Troncone told The Financial Times. “The process proves to be incompatible with the peak volumes that we are going to face. So the only way is to open up the valve. There is no way that we can deliver 100 percent of the enrollment.”

Aeroporti di Roma manages Rome Fiumicino Airport and Rome Ciampino Airport.

Italian airports are not the only ones struggling with the rollout of the system. On Tuesday, Stefan Schulte, president of industry group Airports Council International Europe (ACI EUROPE), said that airports “urgently need full flexibility for border control authorities to suspend the EES whenever needed.”

Schulte notes that the decision on suspensions is left to individual governments, not to airports themselves. Politicians should “stop pretending… that the EES is working just fine,” he told the BBC.

He also cautioned that the summer peak extends well beyond early September, and that failure to address it could result in a total system breakdown.

“Passengers are queuing for hours at peak traffic times and I just do not know how we will be able to cope in the coming weeks with the expected increase in traffic,” says Schulte, who is also head of the company that owns Frankfurt Airport.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has previously warned that waiting times for passport checks this summer could reach six hours.

UK travelers, in particular, have been suffering through long queues and missed flights. Last week, a Ryanair flight from Athens to London reportedly left without 20 to 50 passengers due to passport control delays. Similar scenes played out in April, when just 34 of 156 passengers managed to board their easyJet flight from Milan to Manchester due to the EES rollout.

Last month, Greek officials said they would exempt British visitors from biometric registration upon arrival in the country for summer holidays, but the Greek Foreign Ministry later denied the claim.

According to the EES rules, all third-country nationals must register their facial and fingerprint when entering the Schengen Area. To prevent long queues, the European Commission has allowed all 29 Schengen countries that use the system to partially suspend EES operations throughout the summer.

The EU, however, does not plan to soften the new border regime after September, with Frontex warning last week that queues could persist for another two years.

Article Topics

airport biometrics  |  biometrics  |  Entry/Exit System (EES)  |  Europe  |  identity verification  |  passenger processing