It would appear that the European Commission is not happy about Greece suspending the new EES Entry/Exit border control system for the summer in order to make life easier for British tourists and also make the country much more attractive to UK holiday makers facing long queues in competing destinations like Portugal, Italy and even Spain.
Portugal and Italy have apparently been thinking about following the Greek example, Spain have done little but allegedly tweak the system, not that it has made much difference which airlines ramping up the pressure on Spain to suspend the system until after the peak season.
However, despite calls from the travel industry for EES to be lifted, the European Commission has confirmed that neither Portugal nor Italy will be suspending digital border checks for Britons. The news comes after rumours suggested the two countries might be following the example of Greece by dropping Entry/Exit System (EES) checks on arrivals. And no doubt, should Spain make a Greek move, then Brussels will fire off similar warning. But of Grece can go it alone, why can’t Spain considering the UK is the country’s main tourist market.
Spain is coming under mounting pressure to suspend the new EES entry/exit border control system for British passengers until after the summer. Spain has said that it has made a few alterations to help ease the pressure in some specific cases but Ryanair is leading the charge for the entire system to be lifted until after the peak holiday system.
Ryanair’s Chief Operations Officer, Neal McMahon, said: “It makes no sense that countries, like Spain, are continuing to implement the EU’s new Entry/Exit System (EES) when they are clearly not ready to do so. As a result of this half-baked system roll out, passengers are being forced to endure excessive passport control queues, and in some cases, missing flights.
“This May Bank Holiday weekend alone, passengers travelling to/from Spain were made to suffer hour-long passport control queues. Ryanair’s average flight time is approximately 1hr 15mins – that means that some passengers are spending as much time waiting at passport control than they spent on the flight that got them there.”
According to the EU rule book, the only legal exception to the new system that has been included in the roll-out is the possibility to pause biometric collection for six-hour windows during exceptionally busy times, a flexibility that runs through July can be applied until September under certain conditions.