Did this happen because of Brexit?

This is all happening a few years after Brexit – is it linked? 

No, there is no link between the EU putting in place EES and the UK’s vote in June 2016 to leave the union. 

The current plans date from a ‘revised Smart Borders Package’ presented by the European Commission in April 2016 and fully adopted by the EU in 2017 – but this was just a rejigged version of a package adopted by the Commission in February 2013. 

A key part of the 2013 package was already an ‘Entry/Exit System’ intended to replace the manual stamping of passports of third-country nationals entering and exiting the Schengen area, allowing for the automatic calculation of authorised stays and to alert the authorities to those who have overstayed. 

Going back even further, the main ideas were sketched out in Commission communications in 2008 and 2011, before David Cameron first proposed an EU membership referendum in 2013.