By GB News (World News) | Created at 2026-09-13 05:35:41 | Updated at 2026-09-13 06:52:23
1 hour ago
The EU's controversial Entry/Exit System (EES) has been shelved in at least nine countries in a major Brussels climbdown.
France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, Malta, Portugal and Switzerland have all been granted permission to postpone the full enforcement of the scheme.
Under the EES, British tourists and other non-EU nationals are made to submit their fingerprints and a face scan whenever they cross into the 29-nation Schengen area.
Brussels bureaucrats granted the nine countries leeway to delay the biometric border checks in order to "maintain border fluidity", The Times revealed last night.
The European Commission, which oversees the system, refused to comment on the track-back.
The EU's flagship border controls launched in October 2025 after years of delays and were expected to be fully operational by this April.
But software problems threatened queues and travel chaos, so officials offered countries a 150-day "safety valve" allowing them to suspend checks.
That grace period ended on September 6, and Brussels had previously ruled out any extension.
Despite this, at least nine Schengen nations told the Commission they would not fully enforce the system until the technology worked properly.
The EU's controversial Entry/Exit System has been shelved in at least nine countries
GETTY
Brussels informally agreed - this time, apparently, without a deadline.
"The phrase is 'maintaining border fluidity'," Gwendoline Cazenave, the chief executive of Eurostar, told The Sunday Times after meeting French interior ministry officials earlier this month.
"They [the EU] know that they need to maintain border fluidity."
The EU's retreat came after intense lobbying from airlines, airports and port operators.
Ryanair pushed Brussels to extend the option to suspend the EES until at least next April.
EU officials had repeatedly claimed the system was functioning well, despite widespread evidence of problems.
The EU's retreat came after intense lobbying from airlines, airports and port operators across the continent
GETTY
The International Air Transport Association (IATA), the global airlines body, warned of severe consequences if the EU did not change its position.
"We're going to have a huge problem if we can't switch the system off.
"Even with flexibility, we've seen operational difficulties, technical failures and instability across multiple airports," said Thomas Reynaert, the senior vice-president for external affairs at the IATA.
The British Government is also believed to have applied pressure behind the scenes.
Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the European commissioner responsible for EES negotiations with non-EU countries, is thought to have privately assured Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander earlier this summer that the scheme would not be strictly enforced beyond September 6.
Each Schengen country operates the EES differently, with some nations like Sweden and Portugal offering an app for travellers to upload biometric data.
Heidi Alexander is thought to have helped to force the EU's hand
All national systems feed into a single portal run by eu-LISA, a 400-strong EU agency headquartered in Estonia.
On a traveller's first Schengen entry, their passport data is sent to eu-LISA to build a central file, with fingerprints and facial scans then collected and matched against it.
But two critical failures have undermined the process.
In some countries, biometric data is gathered but never transmitted to eu-LISA due to technical "plumbing" errors.
Elsewhere, border staff cannot access existing traveller files, forcing them to restart the entire process from scratch.
These faults persist, leaving millions of pounds' worth of biometric scanners at airports and ports sitting idle and unused.
