Cyprus will scrap the electronic passport control scanners at Larnaca and Paphos airports and install fully automated border control gates in their place, with the changeover due by the end of the year as the island prepares to join the Schengen area.
Justice Minister Costas Fitiris set out the plan in a written answer to Disy MP George Pamboridis. The scanners now in place were chosen because they are physically smaller, a consideration given the space limits at both terminals, but they leave a passport control officer to make the final check on each traveller and their documents. “In contrast, ABC gates are fully automated border control systems, which also use biometric technologies,” Fitiris said. He added that the gates would prove particularly effective in cases of reduced staffing.
How the gates are used, and which categories of traveller they will serve, is to be reviewed by the ministries involved as installation approaches. That arrangement runs up to the abolition of internal border controls, at which point the gates would be withdrawn, though passport checks of some form will still apply to travellers of all nationalities arriving from outside the zone. The government has been converting other credentials in parallel, ordering universal acceptance of digital citizen IDs in in-person transactions earlier this year.
Cyprus is one of two EU member states still outside Schengen, alongside Ireland. The European Commission confirmed a positive assessment of the island’s preparedness in June and will formally present its State of Schengen report to the Council of the European Union next month. Accession requires a unanimous decision by the 25 countries already inside the zone. Automated checks at the EU’s external border have not gone smoothly everywhere: the head of Greece’s airports body called for an overhaul of the bloc’s biometric entry/exit system last month.
Reservations persist over how Schengen procedures would work at the nine crossing points connecting the two sides of the island. Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman has said it is extremely important for the Turkish Cypriot side to be involved in the accession process, and warned it could bring complications for freedom of movement, particularly for Turkish Cypriots who are not citizens of the Republic of Cyprus.
Sources: Cyprus Mail
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
