Hopes that the European Union’s new Entry/Exit System (EES) would be fully automated at the UK-France land and sea borders in time for the holiday rush were dashed this weekend. Port of Dover management told The Connexion that its £40 million facility—84 self-service kiosks designed to capture fingerprints and facial images of UK travellers bound for France—“will probably not open this summer”. The French Police aux Frontières (PAF), which operates juxtaposed Schengen controls on UK soil, is still creating passenger files manually while awaiting critical software updates.
Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle, Orly and eight regional airports (Nice, Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Nantes, Marseille, Montpellier and Strasbourg) also have rows of idle kiosks supplied by Thales. According to Gaël Léon of the Union des Aéroports Français, success rates during testing have improved, but compatibility glitches with PARAFE e-gates, passport-reader failures and missing language packs mean the machines cannot yet be deployed at scale.
![Biometric Entry/Exit kiosks at Dover and French airports will stay offline all summer, raising fears of September cliff-edge]()
For travellers navigating these shifting requirements, VisaHQ can simplify the process. The platform maintains an up-to-date France portal (https://www.visahq.com/france/) where passengers and mobility managers can check the latest EES developments, confirm Schengen visa rules, and arrange any supplementary documentation in minutes, ensuring smoother passage while authorities iron out the new system’s bugs.
Under EU rules, the flexibility that currently allows border guards to suspend biometric capture when queues build up expires on 6 September. If the technology is not ready by that deadline, travel hubs fear they will have to collect fingerprints and facial images for every non-EU traveller at manual booths, a process that could treble processing times. Eurotunnel and Eurostar, which also host French exit controls in the UK, say they are “waiting for a software patch” before they can activate their own kiosks. For global-mobility teams the implications are serious. The EES not only replaces passport stamps but also enforces the 90/180-day stay rule automatically; an incorrect manual entry could trigger an overstay flag and jeopardise future visa applications. Corporates are therefore advising staff on frequent UK-France rotations to travel with printed assignment letters and to photograph exit stamps until the digital record is reliable. Travel-management companies suggest shifting some meetings from Paris to Brussels or Amsterdam if tight same-day turnarounds are essential. Meanwhile, mobility providers are lobbying the French interior ministry to publish a contingency plan, pointing out that September coincides with the back-to-school expatriate surge and major trade fairs such as Paris Nautic and SIAL.
Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle, Orly and eight regional airports (Nice, Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Nantes, Marseille, Montpellier and Strasbourg) also have rows of idle kiosks supplied by Thales. According to Gaël Léon of the Union des Aéroports Français, success rates during testing have improved, but compatibility glitches with PARAFE e-gates, passport-reader failures and missing language packs mean the machines cannot yet be deployed at scale.
For travellers navigating these shifting requirements, VisaHQ can simplify the process. The platform maintains an up-to-date France portal (https://www.visahq.com/france/) where passengers and mobility managers can check the latest EES developments, confirm Schengen visa rules, and arrange any supplementary documentation in minutes, ensuring smoother passage while authorities iron out the new system’s bugs.
Under EU rules, the flexibility that currently allows border guards to suspend biometric capture when queues build up expires on 6 September. If the technology is not ready by that deadline, travel hubs fear they will have to collect fingerprints and facial images for every non-EU traveller at manual booths, a process that could treble processing times. Eurotunnel and Eurostar, which also host French exit controls in the UK, say they are “waiting for a software patch” before they can activate their own kiosks. For global-mobility teams the implications are serious. The EES not only replaces passport stamps but also enforces the 90/180-day stay rule automatically; an incorrect manual entry could trigger an overstay flag and jeopardise future visa applications. Corporates are therefore advising staff on frequent UK-France rotations to travel with printed assignment letters and to photograph exit stamps until the digital record is reliable. Travel-management companies suggest shifting some meetings from Paris to Brussels or Amsterdam if tight same-day turnarounds are essential. Meanwhile, mobility providers are lobbying the French interior ministry to publish a contingency plan, pointing out that September coincides with the back-to-school expatriate surge and major trade fairs such as Paris Nautic and SIAL.
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