Landed in Turin last night. Me and my other half were the first ones off the plane. Arrived into the empty immigration hall and the staff were at the ready, directing non-EU citizens to (re-)register (delete as appropriate) at kiosk. very efficient. As we have registered before the kiosk sent us to the e-gates. Which is where the fun started. The e-gates showed an error and sent us both to the officer.

Thankfully, we were the first to present ourselves there. I dealt with a very polite and friendly Swedish immigration officer who was seconded to Turin. My partner dealt with her Italian colleague who was overwhelmed at first attempt to use the system while also shouting advice to the Swedish officer (in Italian, naturally). I understand that these secondments are normal in Italy but sure not efficient at a time where the whole system is barely working.

After 5 minutes of deliberations it transpired that neither mine exit from FCO two weeks prior, no r my partner’s exit from BLQ in Nov were in the EES. It was explained to us that they can’t let us in without correcting that first which was followed by frantic examination of every stamp in our already pretty filled up passports… after another 5 minutes they agreed to accept old digital boarding passports as evidence of exit and we were on our way.

Two observations:

1. How is it that the EES seemingly can’t keep track of the second “E” (exit) in its name, especially when the exit and the subsequent entry is in the same country (Italy)…

2. Needless to say, that our 10 min bureaucratic trouble clogged up the whole of the arrivals hall with a massive queue forming quickly because the e-gates kept sending more people for manual check

But I’m sure that someone in Brussels had “EES roll-out” marked as “success” for the 2025 year-end evaluation…

P.S.: My bet on what ultimately scraps this EES system is multiple public sector unions representing police/immigration officers going on strike and refusing to use it. Maybe I’m wrong