Only months ago the European Commission was still insisting that the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) would be switched on for visa-waiver nationals before the end of 2026. But fresh reporting this morning from Brussels-based daily Nezavisne cites Commission and eu-LISA insiders who now concede the timetable is slipping again, with a go-live date ‘no earlier than 2027’. The main culprit is the troubled Entry/Exit System (EES), introduced across the Schengen external border in April 2026. Airlines and airport operators – including Vienna International Airport – have been warning all summer that biometric kiosks are causing queues of up to two hours for third-country nationals, and that the network simply cannot absorb another IT layer until the bugs are fixed. For Austrian businesses the postponement is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, export managers and project teams travelling frequently to North America, the Gulf and parts of Asia will enjoy at least another year of friction-free last-minute travel into the Schengen zone. Companies had already begun budgeting for the EUR 7 ETIAS fee and for additional compliance steps such as passport pre-registration; many may now defer those internal policy changes. On the other hand, travel managers say the uncertainty makes long-term planning difficult. “We have updated our booking tools three times already – first for a 2025 start, then Q4 2026, and now we may be looking at 2027,” complains the head of mobility at an Upper-Austrian engineering multinational. Legal specialists also flag a hidden risk: as long as ETIAS is not operational, carriers remain liable for all document checks at boarding. Any last-minute system ‘big-bang’ could therefore coincide with peak 2027 holiday traffic, a scenario reminiscent of the summer 2022 passport crisis in the UK. Stakeholders in Austria’s travel eco-system are urging Brussels to publish a ‘no-earlier-than’ date so that training, software upgrades and traveller education can be phased in gradually. In the meantime, Austrian border authorities will continue relying on the EES-biometric database and traditional Schengen visa rules. Travellers from visa-waiver countries such as the US, Canada, Australia and the Western Balkans should therefore keep monitoring official channels but do not yet need to apply for an electronic authorisation. As one Vienna-based travel management company bluntly told clients today: “Ignore the social-media countdown clocks – ETIAS is not coming this year.”
Source: Nezavisne novine
