EES: a welcome delay

It has been the week of two delays. The first - that of a decision on Lower Thames Crossing until next May - which came on Monday, was deeply disappointing. The second - that of the introduction of the EU’s new external frontier checks, the Entry Exit System (EES) - is likely to be positive for Kent residents. 

EES was scheduled to be introduced - after many delays and falls starts - at 2 am on Sunday 10 November. However, late on Thursday afternoon, a month before the planned commencement of EES, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson announced a further delay, stating that 10 November would not go ahead and that there would be “a phased approach” to introduction. This reflected major Member States, including France, Germany and the Netherlands reporting that they were not ready to go ahead, citing technological problems and in particular the interface with EU-wide systems.

In Kent, we were not banking on this delay, even as it came to look more and more likely. We have been raising the issue for years, and in January I gave evidence to a parliamentary committee about the risks that EES introduction posed to Kent, in particular spillover of delays in the highly constrained Eastern Docks at the Port of Dover onto the county’s roads. In July, Leaders of councils in Kent came together to highlight the issue to the new government. Ministers have provided additional funding to the points of departure, works have begun to develop sites at the Western Docks and partners in the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum have developed extensive contingency plans. 

Nonetheless, the delay is helpful, giving more time for some of these projects to develop and for discussions with the French authorities over a pragmatic approach to the introduction of the new system. While the approach to introduction of EES is now unclear, it may give scope for a gradual approach (enabling, for example, first registrations to be undertaken at quieter times only, easing the whole process of introduction of the new system) or perhaps even a move to operate remote registration from the start (which neither systems nor regulations are currently set up for). 

The announcement generated a lot of media interest, and I gave interviews to BBC South East, ITV Meridian and Heart/ LBC (I had already spoken to BBC Radio Kent on Thursday morning before the Commission’s announcement). You can also find our media release about the delay here. We will now await more details but, for the present at least, this is good news.