Border chaos is yet to come for Serbians, tourist agencies sending complaints to European Commission over EES

Director of the National Association of Tourist Agencies of Serbia (YUTA) Aleksandar Senicic, said today that traffic jams at border crossings affecting Serbians, caused by EU's implementation of its new entry-exit control system, EES, were to be expected - but that their scale has exceeded all predictions.

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"What we mentioned when we started talking about the introduction of the EES system is that we must take into account how well the police at the border crossings are trained (to implement it), how well the system itself will function technically, these are all the things that we could assume would happen, there were even questions about what we would do when the system goes down at some point, whether the borders would get closed," said Senicic.

He told Prva TV that in previous years, during holidays and with increased traffic volume at Serbian borders, several-hour delays would happen at the crossings with Hungary, but that now the new electronic system has further slowed down the procedures.

"We could not have imagined that the situation would be this chaotic, that people would have to wait 10, 12, even 15 hours at the border. We expected traffic jams, but not to this extent," said Senicic.

He explained that the new system performs checks when leaving the European Union, which is why passengers now have to wait in both directions.

"Once you register, the system records the date of entry, but in order to record the date of exit, a new check must be performed. This means waiting on the way back as well," he said.

Senicic added that these checks should last up to 30 seconds, however, in practice the delays at the Horgos border crossing were long even for returning passengers. He revealed that tourist and travel organizations have already sent objections and complaints to the European Commission, but are yet to receive any response.

"It seems that the European Union wants this system - EES - to become (fully) functional by April, regardless of traffic jams and possible cancellations of trips," he said.

Speaking about the problems faced by professional drivers, Senicic pointed out that the introduction of the EES system represents a significant problem for them and that the so-called "green lanes" for carriers at border crossings helped reduce wait times and costs.

He added that YUTA previously proposed to the European Commission to enable registration of passengers at points outside the border crossings in order to reduce congestion at the border, but that proposal was not accepted.

"We have been proposing all along to the EU to install this software in large cities in some controlled locations, regardless of where that is, whether it's the (Interior Ministry (premises) or, for example, in shopping centers, so that while people are running errands in town they could go to that device, register, so that the data would already exist in a server when they get to the border. However, we have not received any response," said Senicic.

The EES system was launched on October 12, and is being implemented gradually at EU member countries' border crossings until April 2026.

(Telegraf.rs/Tanjug)