Von der Leyen admits EU's new EES border system has serious technical problems

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The EU’s new digital Entry/Exit System is experiencing “technical problems,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen acknowledged on Friday.

“We are working with the member states [so] that the technical problems are being solved,” von der Leyen said at a press conference in Cork, Ireland.

The EES has been a subject of concern since its gradual rollout last year, but the problems have become more acute as air traffic picks up during Europe’s peak summer travel season.

Airports and airlines have blamed the new border control system — which requires travelers from non-EU countries to register their biometric data — for hours-long queues, operational disruption and missed connecting flights.

“There’s still quite a lot of work to do to have these technical issues solved together with the member states,” von der Leyen said.

The comments mark a shift in tone from the Commission, which had downplayed disruption linked to the EES. “In most EU airports, this impact is indeed limited,” Markus Lammert, the Commission’s spokesperson for internal affairs, said Wednesday.

The Commission said earlier this year that registering an entry or exit typically takes about 70 seconds.

The aviation industry sees things very differently.

Since the EES became mandatory, “waiting times at border control have increased significantly, now reaching up to five hours during peak traffic periods,” airport lobby ACI Europe and airline groups IATA and Airlines for Europe wrote in an open letter to von der Leyen on Wednesday.

“These delays are impacting millions of passengers entering the Schengen Area … At the same time, airports and airlines are experiencing growing operational disruption, including flight delays, missed connections and increasing pressure on frontline staff,” the three organizations wrote.

They urged the Commission to give countries greater flexibility “to completely suspend EES” where necessary, “at least throughout July and August.”

Under the EES, travelers from non-EU countries such as the U.K. and the U.S. must register their fingerprints and a facial image the first time they enter the bloc for a short stay.

The system is designed to combat overstays and the use of fraudulent travel documents by replacing passport stamps with a digital record. Registration can be accelerated through self-service kiosks or dedicated pre-registration apps.

However, when the system became mandatory on April 10, border officers were still manually entering data at major hubs such as Rome’s Fiumicino Airport. So far, only Sweden and Portugal have activated the apps intended to speed up passenger processing.

Several airports and ports have temporarily suspended biometric data collection during peak travel periods to ease congestion.

The EES “did not change the legal frame about rules of entering and exiting the EU; it just creates transparency about abiding to the rules,” von der Leyen said in Cork.

The Commission has defended the system by pointing to its security benefits. Between its original launch in October last year and April, “over 700 persons were identified as posing a security risk to Europe,” it said .

Irish Minister for Home Affairs Jim O’Callaghan said those figures have since risen to “approximately a thousand people,” adding that around 110 million passengers have passed through EES checks since the system’s introduction.

“It is effective in terms of protecting European Union security,” O’Callaghan said.