Investigation Blames Consortium as Key Obstacle to EU’s Biometric Border Rollout

A Bloomberg investigation has identified Atos SE as the key player in delays plaguing the European Union’s ambitious Entry/Exit System (EES). Originally slated for a November 2024 launch, the EES has now been postponed to 2025, marking its fourth delay in five years. Designed to integrate the immigration systems of the 29 Schengen Area countries, EES aims to use biometrics such as facial recognition and fingerprints to automate border checks. However, documents obtained by Bloomberg and Lighthouse Reports reveal severe mismanagement by Atos and its consortium partners, IBM and Leonardo SpA, raising questions about the EU’s ability to implement this complex system.

Atos, tasked with building the bulk of EES’s hardware and software under a €142 million contract awarded in 2019, has faced numerous challenges, including incomplete installations, misconfigured equipment, and inexperienced personnel. EU-Lisa, the agency overseeing large-scale EU IT projects, repeatedly flagged these issues, noting Atos’s failure to meet critical milestones.

A 2022 letter from EU-Lisa’s Executive Director, Krum Garkov, cited delays in deploying bug fixes, missing hardware, and transportation issues as emblematic of the consortium’s dysfunction. Internal sources corroborated that Atos was primarily responsible for these failures, with two EU officials noting that the company underestimated the project’s complexity.

The delays have already caused ripple effects. Frontex, the EU’s border management agency, had to reassign 130 staff members who were supposed to work on the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS), a €200 million visa waiver initiative reliant on EES’s technology. Member states, too, voiced concerns about the system’s readiness, with France, Germany, and the Netherlands opposing the November 2024 launch due to technical shortcomings. And Austria recently revealed that its anticipated engineering costs have been pushed up considerably by the delay, in a tender modification filing.

An October dress rehearsal for the launch revealed significant problems, including limited system capacity and connectivity issues between member states and the central database.

Atos’s struggles are emblematic of its broader financial troubles. Once valued at €8.2 billion in 2020, the company’s market value has plummeted to €74 million amid debt crises and restructuring efforts. Internal documents also reveal that the consortium, including Atos, attempted to shift financial burdens onto the EU by refusing to cover maintenance costs, resulting in €20 million in additional expenses for EU-Lisa.

Critics argue that EU-Lisa’s management approach also contributed to the setbacks. The small agency outsourced not only the development but also the project’s oversight, leaving it ill-equipped to manage the complexities of EES. Former EU-Lisa officials and industry experts highlighted that a project of this magnitude requires robust oversight to align the technological capabilities of member states with the system’s requirements. Despite these challenges, the EU remains committed to launching EES progressively, allowing for a phased adjustment period.

Source: Bloomberg

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December 3, 2024 – by Cass Kennedy and Alex Perala