Airport bosses across Europe are losing sleep over the EU’s Entry/Exit System (EES), with one saying he does not know how they will cope in the coming weeks.
Airports Council International (ACI) Europe President Stefan Schulte used the association’s annual congress to warn about the continued operational and passenger impacts of EES and urged preventive coordinated action to ensure the seamless and safe movement of passengers at border control.
Stefan, who is also Chairman and CEO of Fraport AG, which owns Frankfurt Airport, told the event in Prague: “Right now, EES is what keeps me and many other airport CEOs across Europe awake at night.”
“Passengers are queueing for hours at peak traffic times and I just do not know how we will be able to cope in the coming weeks with the expected increase in traffic.
“EU Home Affairs Commissioner [Magnus] Brunner and Home Affairs Ministers must stop pretending the situation is manageable and that the EES is working just fine. It is not. We urgently need full flexibility for border control authorities to suspend the EES whenever needed to avoid further chaos – along with a rethink of those processes.
“This is about showing respect and decency for those who chose to travel to the EU, and safeguarding our reputation as a welcoming and efficient destination.”
He told Radio 4’s The World at One programme on Tuesday that he and other airline bosses supported the EES and understood it was necessary for security, adding: “Staff are doing their best.”
But he said passengers frequently face queues of up to two or three hours and he was worried they could get worse during peak times, saying wait times ‘could be four, five, six hours’.
He also voiced concerns about the speed at which decisions can be taken when queues begin to build, saying the decision to suspend the system at such times does not lie with airports, but federal governments.
“Up to the point we get a federal government decision on this, there’s another hour or whatever [gone] and then we can suspend it, but then the queueing is already for two to three hours and that’s too long. That’s the problem.”
The EU has allowed a contingency period for the suspension of biometric data collections to alleviate border queues until 4 September, but Stefan said the busy period continues after that date and warned there could be a complete ‘collapse of the system’.
