Dover’s biometric EES kiosks likely to stay shut over summer for UK-France trips
Airports also facing issues and say it is critical they are solved by September at the latest
EES kiosks are inteded to speed up passengers' journeys through travel hubs
Getlink
The Port of Dover’s EES ‘kiosks’ will probably not open this summer now, according to the port’s management.
It comes as French airports have also sounded the alarm about kiosk readiness.
Despite the EU’s digital border system – European Entry/Exit System (EES) – in theory being fully operational since April 10 – a £40million facility at Dover’s western docks to allow car passengers to use self-service kiosks to register passport details and biometrics is not yet open.
The facility has 84 kiosks and space for 600 cars and is meant to avoid the need for everything to be done at border guard desks, with the resulting long queues.
Similar issues with EES kiosks, which are the responsibility of the French interior ministry and police aux frontières (PAF), are ongoing for Eurotunnel and Eurostar travellers, as well as at France’s main airports. The problems are said to include necessary software updates.
The Port of Dover authorities told us they are “still awaiting the technology”.
In the meantime, the PAF, which undertakes checks on UK soil at Dover, has been manually creating EES files with relevant car travellers’ passport details but no biometrics (fingerprints/facial image). Both types of data should be collected by EES to create a secure database entry for every non-EU/non-EEA/non-Swiss citizen travelling into and out of the Schengen area.
A port spokeswoman confirmed that the “presumption” is that nothing will change this summer now.
Coaches are already directed to a new area at the western docks, however she said: “The PAF have been completing a mixture of file creations and some biometrics at the PAF desks at the western docks facility – the actual biometric kiosks for coach passengers are not live.”
Once an entry is created for a traveller on first entry/exit, that person is then meant to be logged in and out of the EES on each subsequent external Schengen border crossing, including a validation by way of one of their biometrics (facial or fingerprint scan).
This is meant to improve security as well as to allow better monitoring of the EU’s 90/180 days visiting rule.
Eurotunnel and Eurostar both report not yet collecting biometrics while waiting to be able to use kiosks to speed up the process, although both are also collecting passengers’ basic data and creating files. Eurostar said it is still “waiting for a software update from the interior ministry”.
The official guidance for EES states that temporary stoppages of taking biometrics are allowed for up to six hours at a time when queues build up, though even this flexibility is set to end in early September. The EU said, however, there is nothing stopping a new six-hour period starting after a previous one ends.
What is happening at airports?
Certain larger airports – in Paris, Nice, Bordeaux, Lyon, Montpellier, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Nantes, Marseille, Bâle-Mulhouse, Beauvais – are also equipped with kiosks which for the most part remain unused.
A legal expert for the Union des Aéroports Français (UAF), Gaël Léon, told The Connexion: “Testing of the self-service kiosks has intensified in recent weeks, particularly at Orly and Paris CDG and at certain regional airports (notably Nice and Lyon).
“Success rates for passenger pre-registration at the kiosk and for the successful transmission of data recorded at the kiosk to the central system and the border guard’s desk have improved significantly, but the targets set for rolling out the solution and deploying it in practice on the ground has not yet been met, although we are gradually getting closer.
“There are also continuing difficulties with reading certain passports and visas, the connection and compatibility with PARAFE gates needs to be finalised; the user interface of the kiosks (the successive screens navigated by passengers) needs to be refined; and new languages need to be added.
“Thales [the company providing the machines] is working on fixes and improvements which, of course, must first be tested in the laboratory and then on-site before being rolled out in full, a process which takes time.
“The central European [database] system managed by (EU IT agency) EU-LISA also experienced some setbacks in late May/early June, which at times made it difficult to carry out the tests.
“At present, apart from kiosk tests on a sample of passengers, biometric data is mainly being collected at border guard booths in French airports, with the flexibilities permitted by the European regulation (temporary suspension of biometric data collection) being applied to speed up processing when passenger numbers become too great and the facilities become saturated or waiting times become unacceptable for the passengers and airlines.
“Nevertheless, these flexibilities in theory end on September 6, which is why having the kiosks working by that date is critical for the airports.
“We unfortunately at this stage have no guarantee that will be the case.”
We have asked the ministry if it wishes to provide an update.
It previously stated, on May 13: “The state services and those of the company in charge of developing the tools for speeding up passenger processing (ie. kiosks) are fully mobilised to finalise the technical work as quickly as possible.
“Tests on site are multiplying and updates for the software are planned in the coming months to resolve the difficulties encountered.”
