The July/August exodus from the UK to Europe for summer holidays is imminent. This year UK holidaymakers, as non-EU members, may face lengthier delays than usual at EU borders due to the European Entry/Exit System (EES), the EU’s new digital border system to replace the current arrangement of manually stamping passports. The new system requires non-EU people to register biometric details on arrival at the border. EES became operational in October 2025, but to put it charitably, things have been bumpy for travellers who have been enduring frustratingly long queues, lengthy waits and possible data loss during busy periods at border points.
The Badger’s quietly tracked EES’s progress since before its October 2025 launch. Why? Well, when you’ve accumulated a lot of experience in major IT-centric delivery programmes, professional interest endures even if you’ve hung up your boots! EES’s journey has been problematic since it was proposed in 2016. An Atos-IBM-Leonardo-Thales consortium won a major contract to implement and maintain the new system in 2019, but deadlines were already being missed in 2020 (see here, for example). Additionally, Atos has experienced major corporate upheaval, as illustrated, for example, by the fact that its share price today is a shadow of what it was in 2020. In 2024, the EU announced (see here) EES launch date delays and a move from its initial intent of a ‘big bang’ rollout to a more phased approach. Operations began in October 2025, but some long queuing times experienced by travellers (e.g. see here) suggest there are still some problems.
While recognising that building and setting to use something like EES is never easy, three of the first questions the Badger, as a detached but experienced observer, would ask are as follows. Firstly, is there a stable and controlled functional and data exchange baseline for EES that underpins its interactions with existing national border IT systems? Secondly, how was the EES core IT system and its interfaces, and the readiness for operations at border points, been load tested at scale before operational launch, and what defects and weaknesses were known about during the launch decision-making process? Thirdly, a big-bang rollout rarely works for a programme of this nature, so why wasn’t a different approach adopted at the outset?
Such questions undoubtedly have answers, but the Badger senses that EES may suffer from the curse of being a ‘Smart’ programme because it’s part of the EU’s ‘Smart Borders’ initiative. So, if you experience EES-related difficulties while travelling over the summer, then it’s worth remembering that any ‘Smart’ delivery programme – like, for example, the UK’s ‘Smart Motorway’ and ‘Smart Meter’ programmes – is certain to be painful, frustrating, and more useful to organisational entities rather than members of the public. Promises of improvement will of course be made, but history shows that pinning down exactly when often proves somewhat elusive…
