The head of Fraport Greece, which runs 14 Greek airports, has called for a serious overhaul of the European Union’s biometric border system after queues forced his staff to erect gazebos to shade passengers waiting outside in the sun.
Alexander Zinell, chief executive of Fraport Greece, whose airports include Corfu, Rhodes, Mykonos, and Crete, said the entry/exit system has fundamental flaws. The EES requires non-EU travellers to register fingerprints and a facial image at the start of a trip, and to be verified each time they leave or re-enter the Schengen area. At Zinell’s airports, vulnerable passengers have been prioritised through security to keep them safe while others queue. “It is very unpleasant for passengers, and even dangerous,” Zinell said.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Zinell argued that stopgaps will not hold. “These are just temporary fixes, the system needs to be overhauled,” he said, adding that 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.” Border police can currently suspend checks at peak times, a flexibility Zinell credited with keeping the system from collapse, but that discretion lapses in September.
Airport operators elsewhere have reached similar conclusions. Rome’s airports warned they might suspend the checks for the summer, and airlines and airports have asked the EU to allow a suspension, with the International Air Transport Association pressing for a pause until next summer.
Greek authorities have indicated police will not check UK passengers, though no blanket legal exemption from the biometric checks exists. British visitors make up most of the non-EU tourists passing through Zinell’s airports.
EU officials have conceded the system is not perfect but rejected a temporary suspension, saying that of 1,500 border crossing points only 20 were difficult spots and that member states would be asked to ease the strain. The system, first rolled out last October, replaced the manual stamping of passports and is meant to log every crossing so that authorities can track how long non-EU visitors remain.
Sources: The Guardian
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By Ali Nassar-Smith
