If the letters in the headline are a bit familiar but not really clear, it’s not surprising. Both have to do with crossing Europe’s borders, but in quite different ways. Both were meant to take effect in 2020, and both have been postponed again.
ETIAS, the European Travel Information and Authorization System, has been postponed, and not for the first time, to November of next year from May. Travelers from outside Europe who are not required to have visas will be required to obtain an ETIAS permit good for three years and unlimited trips. It is modeled on the U.S. ESTA system for visa waiver travelers. It comes with a €7 fee.
EES, which has a new start date of next May, is a border control system designed to replace stamps in the passport book with an electronic record based on fingerprints and facial scans. In theory, it should make long lines at immigration a thing of the past.
In addition, it will give authorities more control over immigration and overstaying visitors. In the present system, based on stamps, there is no effective way to determine whether someone, say an American, has overstayed the limit of 90 days in any 180-day period.
