Why the EU’s biometric border-check system has failed to launch

For years, the EU has had a grand plan to try and keep track of those passing in and out of its trading bloc of 27 countries. It would introduce a biometric border-check system that would log fingerprints and photographs, similar to what’s in place at the U.S. border.

The system was first meant to be introduced in 2022. Then May 2023. Then the end of that year. A new date of October 6, 2024, was set, but that’s passed without the system in place. And earlier this month, the EU reportedly delayed the system’s implementation even further, with no date fixed.

“I don’t think it’s going to happen before next year,” says Jacob Öberg, professor of European law at the University of Southern Denmark, who has been tracking the travails of the system for years. The latest decision by European politicians to roll out the system in a phased manner at a to-be-determined date is a suggestion, Öberg says, and that the implementation will involve a two-tier system. He believes there’ll be a softer approach where they can roll people through borders without checks. “Doing the procedure they’re meant to do is too complicated,” he says. “It’s been delayed so many times that at some point you have to start, otherwise it’s going to be embarrassing.”

One of the issues the European system faces is scale. Nearly one billion passengers arrive at, depart from, or transit through Europe’s airports each year. And there are literally thousands of airports on the continent, many of which would have to set up the equipment and systems in order to collect and handle biometric data. “Some of the major airports have all the equipment in and ready to roll,” says Öberg—including Copenhagen airport, which he has seen himself. “But I don’t think it’s ready everywhere.”

While the system is designed to reduce the need for staffing and to make more consistent the checks on passengers across Europe, at least in the initial phases more staff will be needed to handle the checks—alongside more booths. The problem is, some airports appear to have the capacity for neither. “It’s not an impossible system to implement,” says Öberg. “But it needs a lot of preparation. I think the [European] Commission was very ambitious. And they didn’t really think this through, in my opinion, how this was going to be done, actually.”

Part of the challenge also lies in the way the EU is constituted, which makes it different from the United States’s federal and state-level systems. Each country, in theory, has its own policies and approach, and is able to decide how to implement the border checks—but has to follow the wider EU rules, which can cause friction.

A change to that ability to move freely, without any interruption, is also another challenge for the system. Currently in Europe, it’s possible for citizens of one EU country to pass across borders without checks (though authorities do reserve the right to inspect passports upon request). And while that’s likely to continue, the idea of handing over biometric data is contrary to what has come before—and could lead to some unhappy passengers at the rapid increase in data collection. “There are definitely some fundamental rights implications,” says Öberg. “This is quite an intrusive measure in some ways.”