Airport chiefs across Europe have added their voices to growing demands for Brussels to suspend its new border checks this summer, warning that queues already stretching to five hours could become unmanageable once the school holidays begin.
At issue is the Entry/Exit System (EES), which requires non-EU citizens, including Britons, to have their fingerprints and photograph taken the first time they cross into the Schengen area. The system was delayed for years before finally going live in mid-April, but its rollout has been dogged by slow processing and technical failures, producing long queues even outside peak season.
Marco Troncone, chief executive of Aeroporti di Roma, which runs Fiumicino, one of Europe’s busiest airports, told The Times that the airport had spent €12 million (£10 million) on the new system yet had still only managed to bring processing time down to 90 seconds per passenger, from two minutes previously. That, he said, remained incompatible with the 50,000 to 60,000 passengers who pass through the airport each day. The fault, he added, lay not in how the system had been implemented but in “the way this process has been designed.” The only way to avoid a looming “disaster” during the peak travel weeks ahead, he said, was to let passengers bypass the new checks.
UK airlines have named Lanzarote, Tenerife South, Malaga, Amsterdam, Rome, Palma, Naples and Budapest, among more than a dozen airports, as likely to see the worst queues this summer.
Troncone’s warning echoes a formal appeal made on 1 July by three of the industry’s largest bodies – Airports Council International (ACI) Europe, Airlines for Europe and the International Air Transport Association – in a joint letter to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. “Today we have reached a critical point,” the letter said, adding that waiting times had already reached five hours at peak periods and that the delays were affecting families with young children, elderly passengers and those with reduced mobility. It warned of planes departing half-empty while passengers remained stuck in border queues, and said some international travellers were already reconsidering trips to Europe as a result. Existing flexibility allowing states to suspend the rules for short windows had helped, the letter said, but would not be enough to prevent things worsening considerably once the school holidays begin; European airports are expecting around 40 million more passengers in July and August than in the previous two months.
Speaking at an event in Prague, the president of ACI Europe, Stefan Schulte, said passengers were “queueing for hours at peak traffic times,” adding that he did not know how airports would cope with the extra summer traffic without greater flexibility to switch the system off when needed.
Ferry operators have also raised the alarm. Brittany Ferries chief executive Christophe Mathieu told BBC Radio 4 that the checks had already lengthened the time needed to leave port by around 50 per cent, and said the run-up to summer was the wrong moment to still be finalising a system that should have been tested long before now. He said the company had proposed carrying out fingerprint and facial checks on board during crossings so passengers could disembark without delay, but that the idea had yet to gain traction with authorities in Paris, Brussels or Madrid.
Ryanair, meanwhile, named Tenerife South, Palma, Alicante, Malaga, Milan Bergamo, Krakow and Paris Beauvais as the airports struggling most, saying they lacked the staff and kiosks to cope with demand. “It is clear that EES is still not ready for peak summer volumes,” said the airline’s chief operations officer, Neal McMahon, who called for the system to be postponed until September, as Greece has already done with some of its own checks. Most airlines accept that the system is necessary in the long term, given that the UK, US and Australia all operate similar digital borders of their own; their objection is to its timing and execution rather than its purpose.
The risk was illustrated in April, when around 100 passengers booked on an easyJet flight from Milan Linate to Manchester were left stranded after border queues meant they missed their departure. Part of the problem, industry figures say, is that each of the 29 Schengen states has installed its own version of the technology, sourced from different providers, leaving some airport kiosks switched off altogether and others prone to IT failures.
The system has not been without results: EU figures show it has caught around 7,000 people who overstayed their welcome since launch. But with Dover and Folkestone also bracing for delays, and bids by Greece, Portugal and Italy to exempt British holidaymakers from the checks already rebuffed by Brussels, industry groups say the coming weeks will be the real test. Airlines UK, which represents carriers including British Airways, easyJet and Ryanair, said the system was still not working as it should, and called on the Commission and member states to “get serious about contingency measures.”
A European Commission spokesperson said the impact of EES had so far been “limited” at most airports, and that it was for member states to ensure enough border guards, infrastructure and technology were in place. The Commission has said it will hold urgent talks with member states and industry representatives in the coming days.
