The European Union has once again postponed its European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS), the scheme will not be launched before May 2025.
The postponing of the system, means that British passport holders will remain eligible to continue travelling to the Schengen Area countries, Bulgaria, Cyprus and Romania, without the need to obtain the online travel authorization yet, as informed by Schengen Visa.
The source has blamed the delays in the implementation of the Entry/Exit System (EES) by third parties, for making it impossible to launch the ETIAS on the previously scheduled date.
We had initially hoped for the EES to become operational … at the latest, the beginning of the next year. … it has become evident that this timeline is unattainable. As a result, the implementation of the ETIAS has been rescheduled to May 2025, with the possibility of further postponement… it is impossible [for the ETIAS] to become operational without the EES, said an EU Official.
The postponing of the system has been confirmed by several Member States as well, including here the French government, and the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration.
France has been insisting on the postponing of the EES and the ETIAS for quite some time now, due to the Paris Olympic Games scheduled to be held in the summer of next year.
According to Elysée, France wanted to delay the introduction of EES in order to avoid queues and chaos at border crossings from the United Kingdom, as well as its international airports, as the country expects a large number of third-country nationals to attend the event.
The French Tourist Information Center, Explore France, asserts that around one million tourists will spend their summer in France due to the Olympics, including here 10,500 athletes, 4,400 para-athletes, and 206 foreign delegations.
France has been worried about border queues with the UK due to the EES even before the Olympics were planned, as amongst others, French public finance watchdog, Cour des Comptes, had predicted that waiting times at the border from the UK to France could double due to the EES.
British authorities, on the other hand, have continuously expressed their discontent with the inclusion in EU’s ETIAS system, after they left the bloc on December 31, 2020. However, the former EU member itself is working on a similar scheme called the UK Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA). The latter is scheduled to become effective on October for Qatari nationals, and later next year, the government plans on including more nationals from visa-free countries in this system. This means that EU nationals will also soon be subject to this requirement as well.
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