Spain’s border with Gibraltar ‘last for EES rollout’ 

By Maria Jesus Corrales and Brian Reyes 

The border between Gibraltar and La Linea will be the last in Spain where the Spanish government will implement the EU’s new automated border control system in time of the April 10 deadline set by the EU, Spain’s Ministry of the Interior said on Monday. 

Campo newspaper Europa Sur reported on Monday that Spain would apply the EES to non-EU nationals at its border with Gibraltar as from March 30.  

Gibraltar residents are expected to be exempted in line with provisional application of the terms of the UK/EU treaty on Gibraltar, which seeks to guarantee frontier fluidity. 

Spain’s Ministry of the Interior, which is responsible for the country’s borders, would not be drawn on confirming the March 30 date, repeating earlier statements to this newspaper that implementation of the EES at the border with Gibraltar remained to be confirmed pending the signing of the treaty. 

Spain, in common with other EU countries, is introducing the EES in phased stages at all its border points, with the EU setting April 10 as the date by which it must be in full operation. 

“The EES is being tested progressively and La Linea will be the last frontier in which it will be brought into operation, pending the agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior in Madrid told the Chronicle. 

Although it is not yet fully implemented, the system is in fact already being trialled at the border, with some non-EU nationals asked to undergo EES procedures. 

One person who spoke to the Chronicle said they had recently been asked to register on the EES system when crossing the border, albeit it failed on that occasion and their passport was manually stamped.  

Other non-EU nationals who had already registered on the EES were asked to undergo biometric checks as per the requirements of the new system, the person said. 

The system requires non-EU nationals to register their biometric data on an EU database, with those details checked when crossing into the Schengen area and any EU external border. 

Even beyond the April 10 deadline, EU states will have some leeway should they need it, an issued flagged by the European Commission at its daily press briefing last Friday. 

“We know that the gradual rollout runs until April, but since we hear also about concerns regarding the coming summer, there’s also even flexibility inbuilt for the summer period,” said Commission spokesperson Markus Lammert. 

“So member states, if needed, can always prolong this gradual rollout period until September.” 

Mr Lammert said that since the start of the EES rollout last September, some 23m entries and exits had been registered so far, alongside 12,000 refusals of entry. 

“Rolling out such a large scale system is a complex and complicated task,” he added.  

“This is why we went for a progressive rollout with built in flexibility.” 

“That means that Member States do have the tools necessary to manage any potential problems thanks to this progressive launch.”