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A new online system to pre-authorise entry to the EU is set to be delayed until next year, after the chaotic rollout of a separate electronic border-check system disrupted visits to the bloc.
About 1.4bn visa-exempt travellers to the EU — including those from the UK and US — will have to register through the European travel information and authorisation system, known as Etias, which mirrors the US Esta system. Applicants will pay €20 and undergo pre-travel security checks.
Discussions about delaying Etias follow technical glitches and slow deployment of the bloc’s new electronic entry/exit system (EES), which requires non-EU travellers to scan their fingerprints and facial images at its borders. The problems have led to long queues at some airports and land crossings, and prompted warnings from the aviation industry of a chaotic summer ahead.
EU-Lisa, the agency in charge of implementing Etias, has acknowledged that launching it by the end of this year as planned was no longer feasible, according to three people briefed on the matter.
EU-Lisa’s management board met in mid-June to discuss postponing the system to a later date, the people said. Two people said the board would meet again in September to discuss a new timeline.
A spokesperson for the agency confirmed the board discussed Etias’s “entry into operation” on June 17. “Since then, there have been no further developments on this topic,” they added.
The European Commission is responsible for setting a start date for the system, which it can only do after EU-Lisa has successfully tested Etias.
One person briefed on the discussions said that there were “still some IT issues” with Etias. “Let’s clean up EES first before you put another system that will double the line again,” they said.
EU home affairs commissioner Magnus Brunner wrote to aviation executives blaming national governments for the situation around the entry/exit system. “Other factors — unrelated to the EES — like insufficient staff or lack of adequate infrastructure, could be at the origin of delays,” Brunner said in the letter, seen by the FT.
EES was originally due to start in 2022 but was delayed repeatedly by procurement issues, technical troubles and slow rollout in some member states.
“Preparations for the launch of Etias are ongoing. Obviously, as with any large-scale IT system, many factors come into play when deciding when to launch it,” said a Commission spokesperson.
Several EU officials said they were not surprised about EU-Lisa, which manages EES and several other border systems in addition to Etias, struggling to meet the deadline. One official said the delay was likely not going to be long. “If they can’t do it, then they will say they need another quarter or another month,” they said.
But another person familiar with the matter said that launching the system this year was “illusory”.
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