Rome airports warn EU: suspend biometric checks or face summer travel collapse

Rome’s Fiumicino and Ciampino airports have warned that this summer’s travel chaos will escalate into a full-blown disaster unless the European Union suspends its mandatory biometric entry-exit system (EES) at all Italian gateways. The plea, delivered on Thursday by Rome Airports chief executive Marco Troncone, comes as passenger numbers surge past pre-pandemic peaks and the EES—rolled out in May 2026—continues to snarl queues with repeated system failures.

Troncone told the *Financial Times* that biometric checks must be put on hold immediately to prevent “a logistical collapse” during the peak July-August season . “The EES is not fit for purpose,” he said. “We are seeing 40-minute queues at Fiumicino right now, and that will triple when schools break up next week.” Rome’s airports, which handled 43 million passengers in 2025, are already operating at 110% capacity, with 2.1 million travellers expected in the first week of July alone.

The warning follows a blistering rebuke from Europe’s top aviation lobby. Stefan Schulte, president of Airports Council International Europe, accused the European Commission of “pretending the EES is working” despite repeated crashes and data mismatches . Schulte, whose organisation represents 500 airports across 46 countries, said the system’s failure to process non-EU visitors—including Britons—risks violating the EU’s own 90-day visa-free rules. “The Commission has no contingency plan,” he told *The Independent*. “This is a regulatory time bomb.”

The crisis arrives as polling shows a majority of Britons now favour rejoining the EU—on strict conditions. A *New Statesman* survey published today found 58% of UK respondents support re-accession, but only if the bloc scraps the EES, restores free movement, and exempts British travellers from biometric registration . “We want our cake and to eat it,” conceded one respondent. “But not if it means standing in line for an hour just to get into Rome.”

Fiumicino, already crowned Europe’s best airport for the eighth consecutive year , now faces the ignominy of becoming a symbol of EU overreach. Troncone has called for an emergency summit of EU transport ministers next week, warning that without a suspension, “airports will have to start turning planes away.” The Commission has yet to respond to the ultimatum, but insiders admit the EES’s technical flaws—first exposed during its chaotic pilot phase in March—remain unaddressed. With the summer exodus already under way, time is running out.