Since October 2025, the European Union has begun deploying a new border control system: the Entry/Exit System (EES). Behind this initiative, presented as a step forward in security, lies a vast data market and a silent transformation of European migration policy. The EES now records the fingerprints, biometric photos, and personal information of all non-EU travelers entering or leaving EU territory. These data are stored for several years in a centralized database and cross-checked with other systems such as SIS, Eurodac, or the upcoming ETIAS — an automated profiling program assessing the “risk” posed by each traveler. In total, around 700 million people will be subject to this algorithmic surveillance.
These technologies, rooted in a long history of bodily control and classification, extend a logic of automated sorting based on criteria such as age, nationality, or occupation, criteria that risk reproducing the racial and social biases already embedded in our societies. The border thus becomes an invisible mechanism, capable of filtering mobility long before any physical crossing.
Behind this digital infrastructure stand the major players of the tech industry : IBM, Atos, Idemia, Leonardo, Sopra Steria, recipients of public contracts worth hundreds of millions of euros. Their growing role in managing borders raises urgent questions about data protection, democratic transparency, and the commercialization of migration control. While officially promoted as a tool for a safer Europe, the data market reveals above all an increasingly algorithmic border and a decreasingly human one.
Author : Maëlle Parfait