Travel news outlet Travel Extra revealed on 14 October that the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) has been delayed again—with EU institutions quietly deleting the Q4 2026 go-live date from their portals. The European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) and trade body ABTA say they have already identified more than 150 websites pretending to sell ETIAS approvals, even though the official portal is not yet operational. For Czechia, the postponement removes immediate concerns about airport congestion at Prague and Brno once ETIAS fees and fingerprint checks were to be combined with the new Entry/Exit System. Czech border police have struggled with software glitches since EES went live in April, and unions had warned that adding ETIAS this winter could triple processing times. The scam threat, however, is real for Czech residents with non-EU passports and for businesses that arrange short-term visits by colleagues from visa-waiver markets such as the United States, Canada and Japan. Fraudulent sites typically charge €49–€149, harvest personal data and sometimes install malware. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has updated its travel portal to emphasise that no legitimate ETIAS payment is possible until the Commission publishes a new date and that when ETIAS does go live, the fee will be €7 for travellers aged 18-70. Mobility managers should add a warning to pre-departure briefings and advise travellers to ignore countdown ads or “priority registration” offers. Booking platforms that automatically upsell ‘visa services’ are being urged to suspend ETIAS marketing until there is legal clarity. The delay also buys Czech IT suppliers extra time to finish integrating ETIAS query functions into the national visa-information system and the Smartwings API used by most airlines at Prague Airport.
Source: Travel Extra
