The system has caused delays at airports (Image: Getty)
The European Union’s farcical new border system has almost tripled the time it takes for Brits to get past passport control, an airport chief says. Fiumicino Airport in Rome has seen the time it takes for British nationals to pass through the border rise from seven minutes to 20.
The hub’s Chief Aviation Officer, Ivan Bassato, told the BBC: “I think we need to fix urgently certain aspects of the system.” The new Entry Exit System (EES) was fully rolled out in April. It involves people from third-party countries such as the UK having their fingerprints registered and photo taken to enter the Schengen Area, which consists of 29 European countries, mainly inside the EU.
After that, the digital border system should let travellers enter and exit Europe with only a facial scan for up to three years.
But many border points are reportedly collecting the same initial scans multiple times.
The system has caused delays at airports and also at borders where there are French checkpoints on UK soil, such as the Port of Dover.
Ryanair on Wednesday (July 15) warned millions of UK families travelling to Europe this summer to prepare for long queues at passport control and delays resulting from the EU’s “failed” EES.
It named EES hotspots where travellers experience delays and long queues. These are: Lisbon, Tenerife South, Madrid, Lanzarote, Alicante, Malaga, Milan Bergamo, Milan Malpensa, Verona, Paris Beauvais, Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt Hahn, Krakow and Budapest.
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The carrier’s Chief Operations Officer, Neal McMahon, said: “The reality is that the EES system isn’t working properly and families are paying the price for a system that does not work months after launch.
“Passengers should not be the testing ground for unfished border infrastructure.”
He urged EU countries to be more flexible around use of the system to give airports and border authorities time to address the issues.
Mr Bassato said Fiumicino has yet to reach the standard set before the EES and the airport was “absolutely not okay” with waits of an hour or two.
Supt Pedro Oliveira, boss of passport control at Faro Airport in Portugal said a 10 minute wait previously can now take 30 minutes.
He told the BBC an IT system shared by countries using EES sometimes crashes across all member states, requiring a few minutes to reboot.
Mr Oliveira insisted while some queuing is to be expected due to the high number of UK passengers arriving, travellers should not be “afraid” as things will still move quickly.
In the UK, the boss of the Port of Dover said on Tuesday (July 14) that “absolutely everything” had been done to prepare for the summer getaway.
But Doug Bannister, Chief Executive of the port, said it was “very disappointing” a new EES processing facility is not being used for cars because EU technology has not been activated.
The new Western Docks facility is equipped with 84 kiosks to record biometric details, but the French authorities have not switched them on, and no date has been set for when that will happen.
Mr Bannister recently told MPs the port will “face repeated episodes of severe congestion” this summer unless the EU permits more flexibility in EES, which has not happened.
He said: “We delivered our Western Docks facility after investing £40 million of our capital.
“We were under constant pressure to have it be operational, pursuant to the timeline that was EES, and it’s been specifically designed to handle our peak volumes safely and efficiently, and we can’t use it. It is very disappointing.”