The EU's Entry/Exit System (EES) is causing significant delays and congestion at several European airports, according to Ryanair, with Tenerife South, Palma, Alicante, and Malaga in Spain, Milan Bergamo in Italy, Krakow in Poland, and Paris Beauvais in France being named as particularly struggling sites. The budget carrier's chief operations officer, Neal McMahon, warns that the system is not ready for peak summer volumes, risking long queues, missed flights, and unnecessary stress for passengers. The issue is exacerbated by the lack of response from European governments to Ryanair's calls for a suspension of the EES rollout until September, as other EU countries like Greece have already done. The Port of Dover has also declared a critical incident, with waiting times reaching four-and-a-half hours on a day with around 8,500 tourist vehicles, and predicting that daily traffic will exceed 12,000 vehicles in the coming weeks. The port's chief executive, Doug Bannister, attributes the inoperability of the EES kiosk technology to the system's inefficiency, despite the £40 million investment in a purpose-built facility to process passengers away from the main site. This situation raises a deeper question about the readiness of EU border control systems for the summer travel season and the potential impact on the travel experience and local economies.
