Nobody at the European Commission wants to say the words “EES has failed”. So Holiday Extras will say them, and add a fairly simple follow up question: if nine countries covering most of Europe’s tourism have just been quietly told they can keep delaying it with no deadline in sight, why not just turn the whole thing off?
Reports this week reveal that France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Malta, Portugal, Italy and Switzerland have all been granted informal permission to keep delaying full implementation of the EES biometric border checks, with no new deadline attached. The stated reason is “maintaining border fluidity”, which is a wonderfully polite way of saying “we know it doesn’t work yet”. The European Commission has declined to comment on the record. Holiday Extras has been saying since the spring that EES was not fit for purpose. It rather feels like nine national governments have just agreed.
Holiday Extras CEO Matthew Pack knows the problem first-hand. On his family’s trip to Faro this summer, the scanners failed on arrival, forcing them through manual checks with the children. On the way home, despite arriving early and clearing security quickly, they were caught in another lengthy biometric queue—leaving them sprinting to the gate and straight past every shop along the way.
Matthew Pack, CEO of Holiday Extras, said:
“I called this a fiasco last week and, credit where it’s due, nine EU governments appear to agree with me. They just can’t quite bring themselves to say so out loud. Officially the EES is proceeding as planned. Unofficially, most of the continent has just been quietly waved through a side door marked ‘maintaining border fluidity’, which is EU speak for ‘please don’t ask us about this again’.
“The idea may have looked sensible on paper, but in practice the cost now far outweighs the benefit. Travellers face uncertainty and hassle, airlines cannot wait for delayed passengers, transfer operators cannot wait for hours without charge, and airports lose revenue as people race past cafés and shops rather than spending.
“My own children’s biometric checks in Faro were handled by an official who had clearly lost patience with my son and the fingerprint scanner. Despite arriving very early, there was nothing smooth or leisurely about the experience.
“In business, when the evidence shows that a solution is creating more problems than it solves, you stop and reassess. The EU should revisit the intended benefit, examine the true cost and redesign the system around the realities of travel—not keep forcing through a rollout for which nobody seems willing to take responsibility.”
If a system needs this many countries quietly waved out of doing it properly, it isn’t a rollout that needs patience. It’s a system that needs turning off, admitting it didn’t work, and rebuilding properly. And somebody in Brussels owes my wife a handbag.”
Holiday Extras’ modelling on the economic cost of EES disruption, first published in May and updated through the summer, remains available at holidayextras.com.
