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Abta, the UK’s largest travel association, has called for contingency measures for Europe’s biometric border to be extended into 2027.
It has been one year since the European Union began its phased rollout of the entry/exit system (EES), requiring passengers to provide biometric data such as fingerprints and facial images upon first entry into the Schengen Area.
The new system caused issues over the peak summer period, when queues lasting hours built up at airports, causing passengers to miss flights and putting pressure on airport operations.
To provide some relief in the worst-case scenarios, nations were able to temporarily suspend EES until September 2026.
Abta, the UK travel association representing travel agents and tour operators, has renewed its call for EES contingency measures to be rolled over into 2027.
It said the EES system still needs to iron out its stability issues before it can be properly implemented.
Six per cent of the more than 2,000 respondents in the association’s latest holiday habits survey told Abta that the EES process had made them much less likely to travel to the EU.
The vast majority of travellers to Europe said they had not experienced hours-long queues. The Abta survey found that half (50 per cent) reported EES had caused queues of less than 30 minutes, and 87 per cent spent less than an hour in lines.
Eight in 10 respondents said the system had not caused any knock-on issues for their travel plans.
Abta’s director of public affairs Luke Petherbridge said at its annual travel convention in Madeira this week: “Just under half of people who travelled to Europe in our research said they had been through the system.
“Those who are experiencing it aren’t seeing significant delays, but it does tie into a wider point, and there’s a message to the commission: you cannot roll this out fully until it is stable and efficient, because we don’t want to see people being deterred,” he said, TTG Media reports.
“We need to continue to see the pragmatic approach the commission has adopted to date – and if that means extending contingency measures into next year, then that should happen.”
Mr Petherbridge added in a statement to The Independent that “the industry has been clear that improvements are needed, including better triaging of travellers who are already registered and enhancements of the app to enable some checks to be performed prior to arrival”.
He said: “Until the system is operating effectively, Abta believes the ability to step down checks must be retained. If legislation is needed, the Commission should act urgently to bring this forward to provide the certainty that industry and travellers require.”
It is unclear which airports used the flexibility rule to suspend EES and during what period of the summer it was enacted. BBC News said that Portuguese airports, including Lisbon, Faro and Porto, had reportedly been using the suspension flexibility during this summer.
Similar calls were made earlier in the summer. Airports Council International (ACI) asked if border control authorities could have the flexibility to suspend EES procedures during exceptional circumstances.
More recently, ACI called for immediate operational and regulatory change as wait times were “unacceptably high” in the summer, reaching up to five hours and are still routinely exceeding two hours.
Airlines including Ryanair have made standalone calls too, asking for the flexibility rule to be extended until early 2027.
The deputy executive director of Frontex, the EU’s border agency, Uku Särekanno, said earlier this year that there was “no intention” to further ease EES rules after the summer.
However, it was widely reported that at least nine countries have delayed implementing EES past the contingency deadline in early September, including France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Malta, Portugal, Italy and Switzerland.
The countries have been allowed to delay implementing the scheme to “maintain border fluidity”, according to The Sunday Times.
Mr Petherbridge said that the European Commission has been “pragmatic” in allowing the contingency measures to continue in some areas.
Read more: Skip the queues with these 10 European countries that do not have EES
