The biometric phase of the European Union's digital border security system for Channel Tunnel car passengers could miss its September 6 deadline due to unstable software, Getlink's chief executive warned Thursday — raising fresh questions about the bloc's capacity to deliver complex cross-border infrastructure on schedule.
Yann Leriche, who leads the company operating the Channel Tunnel under a concession running until 2086, said the biometric component of the new Entry/Exit System had yet to be implemented for passenger vehicles. "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," Leriche said.
The Implementation Gap
The new EU system became fully operational across the Schengen area in April. It's meant to replace passport stamping with digital tracking — a necessary modernization for an area without internal borders. But airline groups and British authorities have raised concerns over the risk of travel disruption during peak holiday periods, and Getlink's experience suggests those fears weren't unfounded.
The Paris-based company has invested €80 million to prepare its terminals for the Entry/Exit System. That's a significant outlay for infrastructure that now depends on software the company doesn't control and can't fix itself. Leriche said queues at the tunnel have generally remained limited to one or two hours, compared with significantly longer delays reported in certain airports.
He also warned that negative coverage — "especially from the British side, since 80% of our tourists are British" — was creating an impression of chaos that didn't match reality on the ground. "All this bad press ultimately creates a negative impression, even though, in reality, the problems are largely manageable if we do our job," he said.
A Separate Battle with the UK
Getlink also announced it had initiated proceedings over a revaluation of business rates by the British government that tripled its annual tax bill. Leriche said the company 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. The dispute adds another layer of post-Brexit friction to cross-Channel infrastructure.
Despite the software troubles and the tax dispute, Getlink 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.
Why This Matters:
The Entry/Exit System is exactly the kind of project the EU exists to deliver — a common digital border that individual member states couldn't build alone. But the software delays expose a familiar problem: the gap between Brussels' ambitions and its delivery capacity. Getlink has spent €80 million preparing for a system that now might not work on time because the EU-level software isn't stable. That's not just a technical failure — it's a governance problem. Cross-border infrastructure requires coordinated investment and reliable technology. When the technology fails, private operators and travelers pay the price. The good news is that delays at the tunnel have been manageable so far, far shorter than at certain airports. But the bad press from British media — reflecting real anxieties about border chaos — shows how quickly public confidence erodes when EU systems don't work as promised. If the biometric checks are delayed beyond September, it won't be because the idea was wrong. It'll be because execution lagged behind ambition.