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European airports in 15 countries have reported “very bad” delays resulting from the EU’s new electronic border system, with the sector already under pressure due to a potential shortage of jet fuel caused by war in the Middle East.
Passengers at regional airports and larger hubs including in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Greece are waiting up to three hours at border checks, the Airports Council International (ACI) told the FT.
‘‘This situation, in the coming weeks and certainly over the peak summer months, is going to be simply unmanageable,” Olivier Jankovec, director of the ACI European division, said.
“We are seeing those queueing times now, at peak times, when traffic is just starting to build up,” Jankovec said.
Under the EU’s so-called Entry/Exit System, which fully came into force on Friday, passengers from non-EU countries including the UK have to register their personal information and biometrics when they first enter the bloc. The system was gradually introduced from October and aims to better secure the bloc’s borders, collating information about who is entering and exiting the EU.
Airport representatives and the European Commission held a meeting to discuss issues with the system on Tuesday. ACI asked to extend existing exemptions and for the possibility to fully suspend the checks.
“We need the ability to fully suspend EES registration whenever there are excessive waiting times at border control that are just unmanageable,” Jankovec said.
The checks had already been repeatedly delayed amid issues over the IT system, cyber security and general delays in member states. Many airports are still not recording biometrics but only personal information, according to the Commission and ACI.
Jankovec, however, said that despite this flexibility, there were still critical structural issues. Automatic booths at airports for passengers to register often did not function, there was “chronic understaffing” among border control agents, and there were still outages with the central IT system, he said.
“We need the central IT system that underpins EES to work fully, properly . . . things have improved but we still have issues here and there,” Jankovec said.
The border check woes come on top of warnings that jet fuel could run out due to the closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz in the context of the Middle East war, with the European Commission saying on Tuesday that “supply issues could occur in the near future”.
The European Commission pushed back against ACI’s warnings on the EES. “What we can see from the first days of full operation is that the system is working very well. In the overwhelming majority of member states there are no issues,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
While ACI said that the registration of a passenger at peak times could take up to five minutes, according to the Commission, the average is 70 seconds.
“There are a few member states where technical issues have been detected — as can be expected in the first days of full operation of any major new system. They are being addressed . . . it is up to member states to ensure the proper implementation of the EES on the ground,” they added.
The Commission also said that since the EES was gradually introduced in October, more than 52mn people crossing the border were registered and 27,000 people were refused entry, including 700 people who were a possible security threat.
Additional reporting by Peter Campbell in Seoul