\n<\/p>\n
Rome\u2019s airports will have to suspend the EU\u2019s new digital border system for non-EU citizens to avoid a \u201cdisaster\u201d during the peak tourism summer months, according to the head of the airports company.<\/p>\n
Marco Troncone said that allowing passengers to skip the biometric entry-exit system (EES) was the only way of avoiding travel chaos over the summer amid warnings from other European airport officials.<\/p>\n
Non-EU citizens, including Britons, must have their fingerprints and facial images taken the first time they enter the EU, under a new scheme designed to control the bloc\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n
The system was first introduced last October and fully rolled out in mid-April after delays. EES has been delayed by faulty technology, leading to long queues for passengers even before the peak summer travel period, with some people missing flights.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very worried for the summer,\u201d Troncone, the chief executive of Aeroporti di Roma, which operates Fiumicino and the smaller Ciampino airport, told the Financial Times.<\/p>\n
On a scale of one to 10, Troncone said his concern was now \u201ceight or nine\u201d. He added: \u201cThe process proves to be incompatible with the peak volumes that we are going to face. So the only way is to open up the valve. There is no way that we can deliver 100% of the enrolment.\u201d<\/p>\n
British travellers have faced huge delays in some countries and French police temporarily suspended the extra checks at the port of Dover in May. Greece has scrapped a previous promise to spare UK travellers from biometric checks until September.<\/p>\n
Passengers who have passed through EES before \u2013 and should be able to skip the queues \u2013are often forced to carry out the checks again.<\/p>\n
Stefan Schulte, yhe president of ACI Europe, a European airports trade body, told the BBC on Tuesday that individual EU governments had to decide whether to suspend the system, not airports. He said politicians should \u201cstop pretending \u2026 that EES is working just fine. It is not.\u201d<\/p>\n
In early May, the European Commission referred to the \u201cbuilt-in flexibility\u201d in the system that would allow some functions to be suspended.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotionFree newsletter | Every weekday<\/p>\n
Sign up to Business Today<\/span><\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The International Air Transport Association (Iata), an airline industry group, has said queueing times could reach six hours in some airports over the summer, and that waits of up to three-and-a-half hours had already been recorded during peak periods.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo months in, [the system] is producing long lines, missed flights, and growing alarm across the travel industry,\u201d Iata said last week.<\/p>\n Uku S\u00e4rekanno, the deputy executive director of the EU border agency Frontex, told an industry event in London this month that the situation might not \u201cstabilise\u201d for two years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rome\u2019s airports will have to suspend the EU\u2019s new digital border system for non-EU citizens to avoid a \u201cdisaster\u201d during the peak tourism summer months, according to the head of the airports company. Marco Troncone said that allowing passengers to skip the biometric entry-exit system (EES) was the only way of avoiding travel chaos over<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[190,15450,2718,596,1545,18063,6001,111,3623,392,773],"class_list":{"0":"post-50655","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-airline","9":"tag-airports","10":"tag-avoid","11":"tag-disaster","12":"tag-industry","13":"tag-passport","14":"tag-rome","15":"tag-summer","16":"tag-suspend","17":"tag-system","18":"tag-threaten"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}