Long queues at airports: anger over EU entry checks is growing

Danger of collapse at Europe’s largest airports

However, the EES system will not slow down travel, according to the forecast Brussels. At the height of the holiday season, however, the reality looks very different. Complaints from airports and airlines and reports of hours-long delays and flight delays have been piling up for weeks. Especially at the major European air traffic hubs like Amsterdam, Munich, Frankfurtor Rom there is a chronic risk of collapse.

Waiting times for people entering the EU have almost doubled since the system was introduced there, reports the British Financial Times based on current data. It is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain regular flight operations, especially because many passengers miss their connecting flights.

Brits worry about their holidays

Especially holidaymakers Great Britain and the USA, which are the EU holiday countries like in summer Greece, or Italy storm, are increasingly worried about possible mishaps through immigration controls and thus a ruined vacation. Many airlines therefore fear for their main business, such as the Irish low-cost airline Ryanair with her famously open-hearted boss Michael O’Leary. „Only the Europeans can invent such a scam,” he told investors last week. A competitor, in turn, turned directly to the airports. They should use the options offered by the EU Commission to relax controls “and please not let people stand around for three hours.”

Airports waive controls

Some airports, for example on the Greek islands, began waiving the stricter controls at the beginning of the holiday season. This means that the actually mandatory fingerprinting process is skipped. But this is actually a central component of the EES system. Countries such as Spain, Greece and Italy have already negotiated in Brussels the possibility of suspending all EES controls in emergencies.

Exceptions, not just during the holiday season

These exceptions, which were actually only intended for the holiday season, could now be extended well into the fall in order to prevent possible political trouble. After all, the EES is a core part of the EU’s Asylum and Migration Pact. Work has been underway on this prestigious project since the refugee crisis in 2015, but political tug-of-war has repeatedly delayed agreement on core issues. The EES was actually supposed to start in 2022. Here it was technical difficulties that ensured that this project, which was actually politically uncontroversial, dragged on. In any case, the collapse at the airports had become apparent years ago, simply because the amounts of data were too large. A representative of the airport operator complains that “the practical challenges were ignored from the start.”