The EU’s IT systems agency has sued IBM and two European IT partners over repeated failures with its smart border system, according to the Financial Times.
Citing internal communications it has seen, the publication reported that EU-Lisa has sued IBM along with the French IT provider Atos and Italian defence firm Leonardo, which have worked together as a consortium on the creation and deployment of the EU’s Entry/Exit System (EES).
The FT quoted EU-Lisa accounts from July which said: “Following the various delays in the delivery of the EES by a contracting consortium, the agency activated the available contractual and legal remedies to protect its financial interests.”
Previous documents seen by the publication indicated that EES implementation costs had risen from €142 million in 2019, when the contract was first awarded, to €212 million in 2021.
EU-Lisa has blamed the consortium’s delays for much of the spending increases.
In letters between the consortium and EU-Lisa, also seen by the FT, Atos Belgium and IBM Belgium argued that delays were linked to the pandemic and contested fines EU-Lisa had sought to impose.
The six-year EES contract for the first wave of implementation expired this summer, with IBM, Atos and Leonardo handing over their duties to a new consortium in August.
Leonardo and Atos declined the FT’s requests for comment on the legal proceedings, while IBM did not respond.
The EES is intended to track the entry and exit of non-EU citizens on short stays across the border-free Schengen Area, using mandatory biometric checks. Although intended to be a more efficient and rigorous system than passport stamps, errors in the system have caused delays of up to five hours at some EU airports.
Stefan Schulte, president of Airports Council International (ACI) Europe, told the BBC in June that EU officials should “stop pretending… that EES is working just fine. It is not.”
In July, ACI Europe followed this with an open letter to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, urging for member states to be given the power to disable EES and for to establish a mechanism going forward whereby EES could be suspended under “clearly defined exceptional circumstances”.
The ACI said the system was, in its current state, “creating severe operational consequences disrupting passengers and putting border authorities, airports and airlines under unsustainable pressure”.
Since the EES was implemented, EU Commission spokespeople have repeatedly stated that the system is a success. In September, EU sources told the Guardian that just 12 out of 1,500 border points were still experiencing EES issues and that over 200 million travellers had registered with the scheme.
