Getlink warns unstable EU software could delay Channel Tunnel biometric borders
Getlink says the code behind Europe’s Entry/Exit System (EES) is ‘not yet fully stable’, and that car passengers may keep waiting for biometric registration.
July 23, 2026 – 8:42 am
Image by: Getlink Group
Yann Leriche, chief executive of Getlink, has a blunt diagnosis for why Europe’s new biometric border regime is still not running end to end at the Channel Tunnel. The problem, he says, is not the terminals, the staff, or the queues, it is the code.
Getlink, which operates the Eurotunnel shuttle carrying cars and lorries between Folkestone and Calais, warned on Thursday that unresolved software problems in the EU’s EES could delay the rollout of biometric checks for passenger vehicles. The caution came alongside the company’s half-year results.
“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 told reporters.
The system, he added, "was not yet fully stable."
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The EES is the bloc’s long-delayed digital border, designed to log every non-EU traveller entering or leaving the Schengen area by recording facial images, fingerprints, and passport data in place of a manual stamp.
It belongs to the same push toward automated identity checks that produced Eurostar’s biometric corridor at St Pancras and a run of facial verification trials at airports. After years of postponement, the system began a phased rollout in October 2025 and was declared fully operational across all Schengen external borders on 10 April 2026.
By the end of March it had processed more than 45 million crossings and refused entry to over 24,000 people. At the Channel Tunnel, though, one piece is still missing. Biometric registration for people travelling by car has not been switched on, and the next milestone for that phase falls on 6 September.
Leriche’s warning is that the EU-supplied software may not be ready to hold the date. Miss it, and the fallback is more manual processing, more contingency planning, and another round of terminals kitted out for a feature they cannot yet run. It would not be the first slip. Earlier in 2026, France paused biometric registration at Channel crossings, citing software glitches, and border police fell back on processing car passengers by hand without collecting their biometrics.