European airlines have warned the European Commission that new border control rules are causing chaos and will likely worsen during the summer holidays.
The new entry-and-exit (EES) rules were introduced in April as a tech-friendly system to avoid stamping passports of non-EU citizens when they entered the Schengen Area, which comprises 29 states.
One of the aims is to prevent irregular migration by deploying the automated registration of a person's name, travel document data, biometric data, fingerprints and facial images. The date and place of entry and exit, as well as entry refusals are also meant to be registered.
However, the new system has instead caused chaos, with reports emerging of British tourists complaining they had missed their flights because of long queues despite arriving at the airport more than three hours in advance.
“Passengers have already been forced to queue for extended periods outside terminal buildings and on exposed tarmacs because border control facilities cannot process arrivals quickly enough,” airline and airport lobbies, the Airports Council International, A4E, and the International Air Transport Association, said in a letter to the European Commission.
Half-empty planes
“Airlines face half-empty planes at gate closing time, while passengers are stuck in border control queues,” it said.
Speaking to the BBC, British tourist Anne Robinson from Dunbarton said she and her teenage son had missed their flight home from Rome because of a 90-minute queue, adding that a large number of EES machines appeared not to work.
European Commission spokesman Markus Lammert said earlier this week that a meeting would be organised with representatives of the industry in the next days.
“The entry-exit system was launched progressively in October last year after all member states had given their declaration of readiness to do so,” he said. “All efforts are being made to limit the impact on travellers from outside the EU.”
Mr Lammert said that the impact was “limited” in most airports, but acknowledged that some states may have had difficulty deploying enough borders guards, appropriate infrastructure and automated control solutions.
In a separate letter, Ryanair joined aviation associations in asking EU states to suspend the roll-out of the EES measures. Airports such as Tenerife South, Palma, Alicante, Malaga, Milan Bergamo, Krakow and Paris Beauvais are experiencing major disruptions, “with further congestion expected as we enter the busiest weeks of summer”, Ryanair said.
“As schools break up and Europe enters the busiest travel period of the year, it is clear that EES is still not ready for peak summer volumes. Passengers and families should not be used as guinea pigs for a half-baked passport control system that risks creating long queues, missed flights and unnecessary stress at airports this summer,” Ryanair’s chief operations officer Neal McMahon said.
“It is as simple as postponing EES until September, as other EU countries like Greece have already done. Ryanair calls on European governments once again to delay the implementation to protect passengers, families and airport operations during the school holiday rush, instead of forcing holidaymakers to endure needless passport control chaos.”
