A Milestone in Protecting Bavaria’s EU External Borders: Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann presents the introduction of the EU’s new Entry/Exit System (EES) at Nuremberg Airport – A Significant Boost to Security and a Key Component of the Asylum Policy Shift

B Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim B Herrmann today presented the introduction of the EU’s new Entry/Exit System (EES) to the Bavarian Police at Nuremberg Airport. Herrmann emphasized: “With the introduction of the EES at Nuremberg and Memmingen airports, we have reached a milestone in the protection of Bavaria’s EU external borders. The EES has been in operation at all three major Bavarian commercial airports for the past few days.” For the first time, the new system will record the entries and exits of third-country nationals throughout the Schengen Area—digitally, using biometric data, and in real time. In the future, photographs, fingerprints, and passport information of arriving and departing individuals will be collected and stored in a central database connected to the national border control systems of the member states. “The EES thus creates transparency and sustainably improves the data situation for security authorities throughout the Schengen area,” the minister affirmed.

At Nuremberg and Memmingen airports alone, over three million entries into and exits from the Schengen area take place annually. According to Herrmann, this figure “impressively demonstrates the security benefits the introduction of the EES offers Bavaria.” The EES replaces the previous analog stamping of travel documents with digital recording of entry and exit data. This improves identity verification, makes identity fraud more difficult, and makes it easier to track how long individuals have stayed in the Schengen Area and whether the permitted length of stay has been exceeded. “The new system is another important building block of our asylum reform. It ensures that, in addition to strengthened land border controls, air travel will also be monitored in a more targeted and efficient manner in the future,” Herrmann emphasized.

Unfortunately, particularly in the area of migration, it has become apparent that the Schengen Area is also being used to illegally extend stays in Europe or circumvent European asylum rules. For a functioning Schengen Area, effective protection of our common external borders is necessary. According to Herrmann, this is “the prerequisite for Schengen to remain what it is: an area of freedom, security, and justice!”