France flagged as facing problems as airports urge EES changes
Urgent solutions needed to avoid ‘mayhem’, EU told
Sometimes self-service kiosks are not available to use, airports body says
Shutterstock/Franck Poupart
An airports industry body has warned of potential “mayhem” and “serious safety hazards” unless urgent action is taken to ease disruption at French and other European airports, as the rollout of the EES digital border control system accelerates.
ACI Europe – whose members include all French airports – says it is calling on the EU and member states such as France to address problems including three-hours waits at busy times.
It says it is flagging up “mounting operational issues” with the new digital border controls as a matter of urgency. It claims current plans to ramp up their use by January 9 “will inevitably result in much more severe congestion and systemic disruption for airports and airlines”.
An EU regulation on the ‘progressive start’ of the EES requires that by January 9 (three months after the system launched) EES checks must be fully in place at half or more crossing points and for at least 35% of relevant passengers.
As of last week, the first 60 days of the scheme have already elapsed, meaning initial rules stating that crossing points (international airports, ports, stations) can register people without taking facial images and fingerprints no longer apply.
EES, which has been planned for over 10 years, is the EU’s new scheme aiming at better control of its borders and in particular greater monitoring of the coming and going of visitors to the Schengen area who are not EU, EEA or Swiss citizens and who do not live in the area.
It includes scanning in passport data to create an EU database log for the traveller, and giving ‘biometric data’ (facial image/fingerprints). A person’s future entries and exits – and respect of the 90/180 days visiting rule – will then be tracked electronically and, in due course, passport stamping will end.
At some larger airports and ports pre-registration ‘kiosks’ allow visitors to input most of their data before they arrive at passport control.
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What is the current situation?
France took advantage of the right to start EES operations quietly, with only a limited number of passengers initially being logged into the system.
However, according to ACI Europe, France, along with Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Portugal and Spain is among countries now being “especially impacted”.
It has called on the European Commission, its large-scale IT agency EU-Lisa and member states such as France, to address the “mounting operational issues”. It says these include:
The progressive scaling-up of the use of EES has caused border processing times at airports to increase by “up to 70%”, with “waiting times of up to three hours at peak traffic periods”, which is “severely impacting passenger experience”.
The EES border systems regularly break down temporarily.
Self-service pre-registration kiosks are often unavailable to use.
Automated passport gates (called Parafe in France) are unavailable to use in conjunction with EES at many airports.
An ‘effective pre-registration app’ is still unavailable.
Insufficient border guards.
In France, the interior ministry previously stated that it intended Parafe gates will be configured to be usable by EES-registered travellers on subsequent trips into or out of the Schengen area (ie. not on first registration). We have not heard recent reports as to progress on this, however, one Connexion team member noted the e-gates were closed to all passengers, both EU / non-EU nationals, at Nice airport on arrival from London recently.
With regard to availability of an app to allow passengers (optionally) to pre-register some data before arrival, the ministry said trials were under way on the use of the ‘Travel to Europe’ app that has been developed by the EU, but no timetable was given as to when it could be ready to use for travel to/from France.
The EES progressive start regulations aim at increases in EES use, leading to full use for all relevant passengers after six months (in April 2026). However, they do provide that EU states may fully or partially suspend operating EES at certain border crossings in “exceptional” circumstances, such as when traffic intensity would lead to very high waiting times.
Olivier Jankovec, Director General of ACI Europe said: “Significant discomfort is already being inflicted upon travellers and airport operations are being impacted with the current threshold for registering third country nationals set at only 10%.
“Unless all the operational issues we are raising are fully resolved within the coming weeks, increasing this registration threshold to 35% as of January 9 will inevitably result in more severe congestion and systemic disruption for airports and airlines. This will possibly involve serious safety hazards.”
He added: “We fully understand and support the importance of the EES and remain fully committed to its implementation, but the EES cannot be about mayhem for travellers and chaos at our airports.
“If the current operational issues cannot be addressed and the system stabilised by early January, we will need swift action from the European Commission and Schengen member states to allow additional flexibility in its roll out.”
