GSD Criticises Government Over EES Travel Issues
The GSD has criticised the Government over travel problems faced by some Gibraltar residents entering the Schengen area due to issues with the EU Entry/Exit System (EES).
A statement from the GSD follows below:
Instead of washing its hands of travel problems that Gibraltar residents are encountering the Government should have pre-empted these issues and now be more proactively dealing with the problems.
Some Gibraltar residents have encountered travel problems when seeking to enter the Schengen area with risk of travel plans being disrupted. That has, in some cases, been due to their registration on the EES system before or after 15 July 2026. The Government’s Technical Notice issued on 13 October 2026 simply puts citizens in the front-line of having to resolve those de-registration issues rather than proactively resolving issues with the system it says it was intimately involved in designing. The issues raised by all this, once again, suggest a further sign of shambolic preparation on a crucial aspect of the Treaty deal that goes well beyond simple teething problems.
Mobility across the Schengen area was the crucial benefit of this deal for Gibraltar residents. This was, however, made subject to a 90-day period in every 180 days. After the publication of the Treaty text the GSD questioned the 90-day restriction because it would provide a hurdle to proper movement across the Schengen area.
Beyond that what we are seeing now not only confirms that concern but also shines a spotlight on the fact that the Government was unprepared to deal with what are obvious scenarios of difficulties that would arise across the EU.
Rather than asking citizens to try to resolve these issues with each individual country people are entitled to think that over the many years of negotiations the Government would have pre-empted the obvious questions and have arranged solutions to these with the European Commission. Equally the Government should be acting as a central secretariat to pass details of wrongly logged citizens to the EU so that these could be removed by individual EU countries instead of asking citizens to deal with individual countries. Again, why was this not agreed beforehand with the EU?
Leader of the Opposition, Keith Azopardi said: “Why has it taken till now – three months after the start of provisional implementation and after people are suffering travel issues – for the Government to have consulted with the EU on how Gibraltar residents would be de-registered from the EES system? It must have been obvious during the negotiations that people might have been registered before Treaty implementation and that there was a real risk they could be wrongly registered after that. This is just a further example of a GSLP Government desperately playing catch
up on Treaty implementation and not being sufficiently prepared for obvious issues while citizens suffer the pain or anxiety of travel disruption. The issue of EES de-registration is just one of a number of foreseeable post-Treaty travel problems for Gibraltar residents which should have been anticipated by the Government and in respect of which solutions should already have been put in place or risks minimised.”
