The Channel Tunnel operator Getlink warned on Thursday that the biometric phase of the European Union's digital border security check system for car passengers could be delayed beyond its September 6 due date because of software issues. The new machinery of control is already in place across the Schengen area, but for passengers using the tunnel, the biometric component of the Entry/Exit System still hasn’t been implemented for passenger vehicles. The border wants its data. The software, apparently, isn’t ready.
Chief Executive Yann Leriche said the problem sits with the European level software, which he described as not yet fully stable. "I'm not going to tell you that we aren't experiencing any difficulties at all, because there's one issue that affects us all and for which there is no obvious immediate solution: the software provided by the European Union," he said. That’s the Brussels apparatus in one sentence: a border regime sold as modernisation, then handed down to operators and travellers alike as a technical inconvenience, with the people crossing left to absorb the disruption.
Fortress Europe, Packaged as Software
The new EU system became fully operational across the Schengen area in April, and airline groups and British authorities have already raised concerns about travel disruption during peak holiday periods. The language is bureaucratic, the effect is not. Border control now arrives as code, scanners, and queues, with the same old state power wearing a digital badge. The tunnel, one of the arteries of movement between Britain and the continent, is being folded into a system that treats mobility as something to be logged, sorted, and checked.
Getlink said it has invested €80 million to prepare its terminals for the Entry/Exit System. That figure tells its own story. Private operators are forced to spend heavily to adapt to a border regime they didn’t design, while the public is told this is simply the cost of orderly movement. Leriche said queues at the tunnel have generally remained limited to one or two hours, compared with significantly longer delays reported in certain airports. Limited, in this context, means people waiting under a system built to slow them down.
He also said, "All this bad press — especially from the British side, since 80% of our tourists are British — ultimately creates a negative impression, even though, in reality, the problems are largely manageable if we do our job." The line is revealing. The issue, from the operator’s point of view, is not the border itself but the publicity around it. The machinery can be managed, the delays can be contained, and the image can be repaired. The people moving through it still have to stand there.
The State’s Tax Hand and the Legal Threat
Getlink, which operates the Channel Tunnel under a concession running until 2086, also said it had initiated proceedings over a revaluation of business rates by the British government that tripled its annual tax bill. The company said it would give the UK's new government until the end of the summer to reconsider its position before launching the first stage of a formal legal challenge. So the same state that polices movement also reaches into the company’s accounts, then the company reaches back through the courts. Different desks, same hierarchy.
The tunnel operator raised its full-year earnings guidance to a range of €835 million to €870 million, compared with €820 million to €860 million previously, assuming only limited disruption from the new entry system's rollout. Even here, the border regime is treated as a manageable line item, another cost to be absorbed by a company built around controlled passage. The people who actually move through the tunnel don’t get a guidance range. They get the queue.
The EU presents this as digital efficiency. British authorities worry about disruption. Airline groups worry about peak holiday periods. Getlink worries about software stability, tax bills, and bad press. Ordinary travellers are left inside the same old border logic, only now it comes with biometric checks and a promise that the system will eventually work as intended. That’s the point. Fortress Europe doesn’t need to be smooth to function. It only needs to keep deciding who moves, how fast, and under what surveillance.