1.4 Billion People Will Have to Apply for an ETIAS Authorization Before Travelling to EU from 2024

Starting in 2024, 1.4 billion individuals from more than 60 different countries who presently travel to the 27 Schengen Area nations without a short-stay visa will be required to apply for an online travel authorization before any journey to the Member States.

Since 2016, the European Union has been working on this travel authorisation, known as the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS), in order to improve security in Europe by knowing who is coming ahead of time.

Earlier, the system was set to go live in November 2023, but the EU quietly postponed its debut to 2024 in the summer of last year, without making any statement.

“ETIAS is planned to be operational in 2024,” says a new page on the ETIAS issued by the EU Commission’s Migration and Home Affairs.

SchengenVisaInfo.com addressed the EU Commission about the change in the date of the ETIAS launch and the reasons for it at the time, but the Commission has yet to react months later.

Beginning in November of this year, travellers from Schengen visa-free nations will be required to apply for the ETIAS. The application will be submitted via the ETIAS website, which has yet to be activated but will be published under the.eu domain before November.

According to SchengenVisaInfo.com, applying for an ETIAS will take around 10 minutes, since travellers will have to submit their passport scan and a photo of themselves to the system, as well as answer some easy questions.

“About 1.4 billion individuals from over 60 countries benefit from visa-free travel to the European Union,” the EU Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) stated in a statement made in October 2021.

The EU just stated that the Entry/Exit System, which was supposed to go into operation in May 2023, will now be delayed until the end of the year as well.

The move was announced by the EU agency for the Operational Management of Large-Scale IT Systems in the Areas of Freedom, Security, and Justice (eu-LISA) during a meeting of the eu-LISA Management Board on January 12 in Tallinn, Estonia.

“With EES, the scheduled Entry into Operation of May 2023 is considered no longer possible owing to delays from the contractors. “The Agency is presently creating a new timeframe that will be presented for approval at the JHA Council in March 2023,” according to the agency.

The Entry/Exit System (EES) is a new automated IT system developed by the EU that will keep track of third-country visitors, including those who require and do not require visas.