ETIAS is the online permit that travellers from 59 visa-exempt countries will one day need before entering 30 European countries. It costs 20 euros, and until this summer the official EU page said it would start in the last quarter of 2026. That sentence has been taken down. In its place is a notice that ETIAS “is currently not in operation and no applications for travel authorisations are collected at this point”. No new date has replaced it.
It cannot start before the Entry/Exit System does — the biometric border check that began rolling out in October 2025 and produced long queues at European borders this summer. eu-LISA, the EU agency building both, expects to present a revised plan after its board meeting in September. Airlines, booking sites and border staff have spent years preparing for a system that keeps not arriving.
So…:
What have you announced so many times that people have stopped believing it will arrive?
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Picture:
commons.wikimedia.org // Subhashish Panigrahi (CC BY-SA 4.0)