Minister for Home Affairs inaugurates new automated passenger border crossing system at Barcelona Airport

The Automated Border Crossing System (ABC), for use by citizens of the European Economic Area of legal age and bearers of an e-passport or e-ID card, not only speeds up passenger border crossing times but also increases security and facilitates interconnection with other systems.

The system checks the validity of the electronic identification document, extracts information on image and fingerprints, captures the live image and fingerprint of the passenger in question and compares them with the information taken from the electronic identification document, and checks the police databases to identify flagged passengers.

The ABC System is in operation at the airports of Madrid, Barcelona, Girona, Palma de Mallorca, Alicante, Malaga and Tenerife Sur, and was also recently launched at the Port of Algeciras and the land border crossing between La Línea de la Concepción and Gibraltar. A total of 127 automated identification booths have been installed. 24 of them are at Barcelona-El Prat Airport - 12 in Terminal 1 and another 12 in Terminal 2.

The Automated Border Crossing System forms part of the Smart Borders Programme co-financed by the European Commission and aimed at integrating all air, sea and land borders.