Airports and airlines have attributed the hours-long queues, operational disruptions, and missed connecting flights to the new border control system, which mandates biometric data registration for travelers from non-EU countries.
“There’s still quite a lot of work to do to have these technical issues solved together with the member states,” von der Leyen stated.
These comments represent a change in tone from the Commission, which had previously minimized the disruptions related to the EES. “In most EU airports, this impact is indeed limited,” Markus Lammert, the Commission’s spokesperson for internal affairs, said on Wednesday.
Earlier this year, the Commission mentioned that registering an entry or exit generally takes about 70 seconds.
The aviation industry holds a contrasting view.
Since the EES became mandatory, “waiting times at border control have increased significantly, now reaching up to five hours during peak traffic periods,” airport lobby ACI Europe along with airline groups IATA and Airlines for Europe expressed in an open letter to von der Leyen on Wednesday.
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