Assita Kanko (ECR, Belgium), rapporteur on the postponement of the EU’s Entry/Exit System (see EUROPE 13593/14), was able to count, on Tuesday 8 April, on the fairly broad support of her colleagues on the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties Civil Liberties for the rapid adoption of her text.
This IT system will digitally record entries and exits, passport data, fingerprints and facial images of third-country nationals travelling for short stays in an EU Member State, making it easier to detect fraud and overstays. Adopted in 2017, it has been postponed several times, with three Member States (France, the Netherlands and Germany) still saying in 2024 that they were unable to launch it last November as planned. The Commission had therefore proposed to the Member States a gradual entry into force starting in autumn.
EU Home Affairs Ministers approved the proposal on 5 March, with all Member States due to begin implementing the EES in October and the system fully operational six months later.
In her proposal, the Belgian MEP supports the objective of relieving countries with operational difficulties and stresses that the gradual deployment of the EES over the six-month phasing-in period is voluntary.
She insists that Member States that decide to start using EEs from day one and simultaneously at all their border crossing points will be able to do so, so as not to be penalised.
However, Member States opting for gradual deployment should “benefit from greater flexibility. Instead of starting with at least 10% from day one, Member States will be allowed to reach 10% within the first 30 days of phasing in. And instead of recording at least 50% of the estimated number of border crossings in the EES by day 90, they need to reach at least 35%”.
The MEP from the ECR group also wants Member States to have the option, in exceptional circumstances, of suspending the recording of biometric data in the EES after the end of the phasing-in period for a limited period of 60 days.
Links to the report and amendments: https://aeur.eu/f/gbw; https://aeur.eu/f/gbx (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)