EU border checks face overhaul calls as summer travel chaos looms
The head of Fraport Greece is demanding an urgent overhaul of the EU’s new biometric border checks, warning that processing failures are endangering passengers and threatening to cripple Europe’s summer tourism industry.
The chief executive of Fraport Greece has called for a fundamental overhaul of the EU’s entry-exit system (EES), warning that the bloc's new border checks are pushing airport infrastructure to breaking point. Alexander Zinell, who oversees 14 regional airports including those on Corfu, Rhodes, Mykonos and Crete, said operators have been forced to erect gazebos outside to shield queued passengers from the sun. Vulnerable travellers are now being prioritised through security simply to ensure their safety.
“It is very unpleasant for passengers, and even dangerous,” Zinell said. The EES requires non-EU visitors to provide fingerprints and facial photographs at the start of their trip, with these biometrics verified each time they cross the Schengen zone's external borders. Since its rollout last October, the system has created severe bottlenecks at exactly the time when southern European economies rely most on inbound tourism.
Greek authorities have so far avoided the worst of the delays by instructing police not to process British passengers, who make up the vast majority of non-EU tourists passing through Greek terminals. However, this approach relies on a temporary legal flexibility granted to border police to suspend checks during peak periods. That exemption is scheduled to lapse in September, a deadline Zinell describes as the only thing preventing total system collapse.
“These are just temporary fixes, the system needs to be overhauled,” Zinell said. “It needs a new version, an update, and probably a reconfiguration in order to allow people to register before they fly, before they get on a plane, before they go to the airport.”
The criticism is no longer confined to Greece. The International Air Transport Association (Iata) is urging the EU to suspend the controls entirely until next summer. Airlines are reporting missed connections and extensive delays at border crossings in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Belgium. Ryanair has specifically warned of "queue chaos" in major Spanish holiday hubs like Alicante, Málaga and Palma.
The disruption also threatens to spill over into the cross-Channel ferry network. The UK Home Office is lobbying France to suspend EES checks at Dover, warning of "utter chaos and miles of tailbacks" as peak summer traffic begins on 17 July. During the May half-term holiday, EES processing contributed to four-and-a-half-hour delays at the port. Dover expects nearly 50 percent more vehicles during the upcoming summer peak.
Despite the industry backlash, Brussels has rejected calls for a temporary suspension. EU authorities concede the system is "not perfect" but maintain that only 20 of the bloc's 1,500 border crossing points are problematic. Officials are instead relying on individual member states to implement their own mitigation measures to absorb the strain.
