During a House Audit Committee session on 24 September, senior police official Michalis Katsounotos announced that Cyprus is "very close" to going live with the EU Entry/Exit System (EES) in March 2027. The EES will replace passport stamping at Larnaca, Paphos and sea ports with biometric kiosks that record each non-EU traveller’s fingerprints, facial image, date of entry and permitted length of stay. Deputy Migration Minister Nicholas Ioannides said the government is upgrading and inter-linking legacy databases so that immigration, police and social-insurance authorities can share real-time information on who has entered or left the Republic. Pending asylum cases have already fallen from roughly 24,000 to 13,000 since mid-2024, while 6,116 migrants were returned between January and August 2026. Officials credited better data-sharing pilots for faster decisions. The new IT architecture is critical to Cyprus’ bid for Schengen membership: Brussels requires full biometric capture and automated over-stay alerts before internal border checks can be lifted. Austrian border experts will visit Cyprus in October to conduct a technical dry-run. If the test succeeds, the European Commission is expected to give a positive opinion on EES readiness in its next Schengen progress report. For business-travel managers, the change will streamline airport formalities but also tighten enforcement of 90-day limits for non-EU assignees. Companies should start logging staff travel dates carefully; overstays will automatically generate fines and future entry bans once the system is switched on. Multinationals that move staff between Cyprus and other EU locations are advised to arrange briefing sessions on the new rules well before the March rollout.
