European Commission mobilises 25 Frontex agents and €8 million in infrastructure to ease Portugal’s airport security chaos

The European Commission announced on Thursday that it was to make 25 Frontex agents and €8 million available to ease the current intolerable situation at Portugal’s border controls because of the EES System.

“Regarding Frontex (European Border and Coast Guard Agency), it has around 25 agents in Portugal, as well as document specialists who assist the Portuguese authorities in applying the rules.

There is also funding available, and I think that, in total, Portugal has around seven to eight million euros for this purpose, mainly for infrastructure,” said the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Magnus Brunner.

The European official responsible for this area stressed that “Portugal is doing everything to make the system work,” in statements to the Lusa news agency at the start of the Justice and Home Affairs Council in Luxembourg.

Two weeks after the European Commission denied that there was a link between the queues at airports in Portugal and the European Union (EU) new Entry/Exit System (EES), and after the Government admitted to a European problem and not just a Portuguese one, Magnus Brunner stressed that, “meanwhile, Portugal has done an excellent job in preparation.”

“It has increased human resources, strengthened teams, improved IT systems and invested in their development, and we are here to provide support. We have Frontex agents and Frontex specialists on the ground supporting Portugal,” he said.

Long queues and high waiting times linked to the new border control system have been especially bad at Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado Airport.

A new border control area was due to open at the airport on May 29, with additional booths for the Public Security Police (Polícia de Segurança Pública, PSP) and more electronic gates.

Meanwhile, Portugal’s Hotel and Restaurant Association AHRESP warned that national airports were showing signs of “operational collapse” at the very start of the high tourism season, with long queues, delays at entry and exit border controls and repeated daily constraints.

The association said the country was living through an “unsustainable contradiction”, because it invests heavily in marketing Portugal internationally as an excellent destination while allowing a visitor’s first experience on entering the country to be a nightmare lasting hours in queues, and missed flights and connections resulting in bad press, complaints on social media while running the risk of cancelled bookings both now and in future.

Sources: Lusa/EC; Credits: Biometric Update