Technology

EU digital border system wrongly flags Britons as overstayers

Author Jojo Moyes detained despite spending 23 days in Europe over six months, EU sues IBM over the failures while the wrongly flagged face 10,000-euro fines and two-year bans

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The EU’s digital entry and exit system was launched last year to replace passport stamps with biometric checks, but its rollout has been beset by technical problems. Photograph: Avpics/Alamy The EU’s digital entry and exit system was launched last year to replace passport stamps with biometric checks, but its rollout has been beset by technical problems. Photograph: Avpics/Alamy theguardian.com
Jojo Moyes was detained by French border guards after a holiday and accused of overstaying. Photograph: Which Jojo Moyes was detained by French border guards after a holiday and accused of overstaying. Photograph: Which theguardian.com

The author Jojo Moyes was detained by French border guards after a holiday and accused of overstaying her post-Brexit allowance in Europe. She had spent 23 days in the European Union over the previous six months. The EU's digital entry/exit system had no record of her departure from Portugal in May, so as far as its database was concerned, she had never left.

The entry/exit system, launched last year to replace passport stamps with biometric checks across the Schengen zone, has a characteristic failure mode: it captures some passengers' biometrics on arrival but not on departure, leaving the rolling 180-day window to accumulate days they did not spend. The clock starts the moment a person enters the EU, and anyone deemed to have remained beyond 90 days faces deportation or fines of up to 10,000 euros. Britons are then told they have exhausted an allowance they never used. Jane Nolan and her husband, who spent 40 days in France in April and made no subsequent Schengen trips, found the system showed their allowance spent and were blocked from booking a return. Over the summer, some countries suspended the system entirely and reverted to manual passport checks amid technical glitches and staff shortages.

The remedies on offer differ by rank. The European Union is suing IBM and two European firms over the system's failures. Moyes, by contrast, was told by a senior border officer in Marseille not to re-enter Europe until her record was corrected — on pain of a 10,000-euro fine and a two-year ban. The correction must be sought from the same authorities that operate the system that lost her departure in the first place.

The EU's remedy is a lawsuit. Moyes's, for now, is to wait outside until the database agrees she left.