EU delays its troubled border checks but once more to keep up ‘fluidity’

The European Union has again relaxed its controversial entry-exit system (EES) for at least nine countries to stop huge delays at borders.

In a climbdown by Brussels, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Malta, Portugal, Italy and Switzerland are understood to have been allowed to delay full implementation of EES to ‘maintain border fluidity’.

The system requires British and other non-EU citizens to provide fingerprints and a facial scan when they enter the 29 countries in the Schengen zone.

After years of delays, the EU’s flagship immigration controls began their roll-out last October. It was thought they would be fully in force by April, but facing the prospect of long queues at borders because of software failings, officials granted countries a 150-day grace period during which they could drop the checks to avoid travel chaos.

This safety valve expired last Sunday, with the EU insisting there would be no extension. 

But at least nine Schengen countries are understood to have told the European Commission, which is responsible for overseeing the EES, that they would not enforce the new controls in full until the technology was working correctly.

Queues of passengers at Lisbon Humberto Delgado Airport Arrivals waiting for immigration border control processing for up to 3 hours in June 2025

In response, Brussels informally permitted them to do so. 

‘The phrase is “maintaining border fluidity”,’ Eurostar chief executive Gwendoline Cazenave told The Sunday Times after meeting officials from the French interior ministry earlier this month. ‘[The EU] know they need to maintain border fluidity.’

The climbdown follows huge pressure on Brussels from airlines, airports and ports. Ryanair has urged the EU to extend the option to suspend EES until next April. 

The UK Government has also lobbied to ensure that EES would not be strictly enforced beyond September 6.

The European Commission refused to comment, but officials have repeatedly insisted that EES is working well – despite a swathe of evidence to the contrary.

‘We’re going to have a huge problem if we can’t switch the system off,’ said Thomas Reynaert of global airlines alliance IATA. ‘Even with flexibility, we’ve seen operational difficulties, technical failures and instability across multiple airports.’

Problems have been reported in both uploading initial scans to a central database, and for border officials trying to later recover the data.