Government Responds To GSD Criticism Over EES Travel Issues

The Government has responded to the GSD’s criticism over travel problems linked to the EU Entry/Exit System (EES), saying the process for correcting registration records is the same as for other travellers across Europe.

A statement from the Government follows below:

The Opposition’s comments on the EES betrays a distinct lack of knowledge on the subject as well as a continued willingness to adopt a negative and destructive stance on almost every subject. 

The EES is an electronic immigration framework used in 29 European countries not all of which are part of the European Union. The UK-EU treaty in respect of Gibraltar provides in Article 42 an exemption for the holders of Gibraltar identity cards and civil registration cards to register with and be processed by the system. 

The EES is nonetheless unrelated to the Gibraltar treaty. It came into progressive effect from October 2025 until it was fully applied in April 2026, before the treaty was signed and provisionally applied. This means that there will be Gibraltar residents who registered correctly before the treaty was provisionally applied and others who were registered incorrectly afterwards . Its phased application also has meant that there are thousands of persons all over Europe and elsewhere who may find that they have an EES entry and not an exit, as until recently border guards were given the power to override the EES during busy periods at border crossing points. 

The EU has already established Europe-wide solutions for persons who find themselves in this predicament. The issues faced by Gibraltar card holders fall under exactly the same framework as the solutions found for other people who may also have had issues in their interactions with the EES. 

In other words, the procedure is the same for everybody else, everywhere else and it has been in place ever since the EES came into effect.  

The Government was willing to consider acting as an interface between the Gibraltar resident and the EES authorities. However, there was a reluctance on the other side to go down this route for EU data protection reasons. This is evidenced by the fact that it is data controllers and data protection officers who manage this interaction with the citizen on behalf of the Schengen Member States for removal from or alteration of the data held on the EES.  

The Government has been extremely proactive in keeping residents of Gibraltar fully informed at every stage in the process through the publication of detailed information on the subject. It is a nonsense for the Opposition to maintain otherwise. Indeed, such information goes back to at least 2024 and 2025, when there was no treaty, and then it has continued after 15 July 2026 after the treaty was provisionally applied. 

The Government has been monitoring the interaction between the EES and Gibraltar card holders ever since. On 23 September, the Government issued a notice in order to gather further detailed information as to that interaction. This has formed the basis of our discussions with the European Commission in order to establish whether or not there was a different route which could be applied for Gibraltar card holders. 

The Commission has insisted that we used the same channels which are in existence for everyone else, and which were already in place while the treaty was being negotiated. It is therefore absurd to describe this situation as playing catch-up when the process was already there. 

The Government understands and accepts that it is frustrating and disruptive when Gibraltar card holders are wrongly prevented from exercising their treaty rights to EES exemption at external border crossing points of the Schengen area. The circulation of this information by the Commission once again will assist in facilitating those rights. 

Sadly, all this shows that the Opposition have no concept of the national interest and will not hesitate to play politics with every issue no matter how serious it might be. 

The good news is that some people who submitted a request to the Schengen authorities some days ago have already received a positive response.