The sunset of the physical stamp on the passport marks the beginning of a digital revolution that, if not managed with adequate tools, risks turning into a bottleneck for port operations. This is the central message that emerged from the recent meeting of the Propeller Club Port of Leghorn, chaired by Maria Gloria Giani, which brought together institutions, trade associations, and technicians to analyze the impact of the /Exit System (EES), the new European border system that came into force last October.
After the welcome to the new commander of the Naval Academy, Admiral Alberto Tarabotto, the proceedings were opened by the Prefect of Livorno, Giancarlo Dionisi. In his speech, the Prefect reiterated the commitment of the institutions to ensure the new system achieves its primary objectives: securing the borders, optimizing the management of migration flows, and combating irregularity. Dionisi sent a clear message to the audience: security should not be seen as a cost or a brake, but rather as a structural investment for the future of the country.
The task of translating the regulation into operational practice fell to Agnese Di Napoli, Deputy Police Commissioner and head of the Maritime Border Police Office. The manager explained how the EES was created to respond to a security need that is now urgent for the Schengen area: that of monitoring not so much irregular arrivals by sea, but rather the phenomenon of so-called “overstayers,” those foreign citizens who enter legally with a tourist visa but remain beyond the 90 days allowed within a six-month period.
The old stamp will be replaced by a digital file fed by biometric data (face and fingerprints), a complex procedure that, however, sees Livorno in a “privileged” position. Currently, in fact, the Leghorn port does not handle regular direct traffic from non-Schengen countries, and categories such as cruise passengers and mariners are temporarily excluded. At the same time, the Police are ready to handle emergencies with mobile stations on the quay, waiting for the system to become fully operational in April 2026, a date after which it will nonetheless coexist with traditional procedures for a five-year guarantee period.
During the debate, concrete concerns emerged. Marco Paifelman, Secretary General of Federagenti, presented the evidence of the numbers: the first trials indicate that control times increase from the 30 seconds of manual stamping to about 2-3 minutes with the digital procedure. A dilation that also greatly worries Alessandro Ferrari (Assiterminal) and Francesco Beltrano (Fise-Uniport), who highlighted the impossibility of replicating the airport model on the quay, given that ports, lacking the commercial revenues that fund automatic gates in airports, must manage “waves” of simultaneous disembarkations and vehicles loaded with families, making it unthinkable to have everyone get out for biometric scanning without paralyzing the gates.
Weaving the thread between critical issues and possible solutions was the maritime lawyer Luca Brandimarte, a councilor of the Club and Assarmatori collaborator, who highlighted the importance of constructive dialogue with the administration. Brandimarte shifted the focus to regulatory opportunities, pointing out how European guidelines could provide exemptions for “circular cruises” that only call at EU ports.
On the operational front, he cited examples of pragmatic adaptation: from the “Bari model,” which manages flows with Albania through specific agreements, to the inventiveness of Palermo, where ferries from North Africa are testing visual pre-identification systems (such as codes on cars) to speed up disembarkation.
A contribution to the understanding of the dynamics at play came from the maritime consultant Angelo Roma who, through a slide presentation, retraced the stages of the /Exit System, offering the audience a summary of the challenges awaiting the cluster. His speech highlighted the risk that the new digital frontier, if not supported by technological investments and operational flexibility, could turn into an “insurmountable wall” for vital maritime connectivity.
On the resource front, Di Napoli suggested collaboration between institutions to avoid waste on rapidly obsolete technologies and the possible operational support of the European agency Frontex, while the president Maria Gloria Giani, recalling how September 11th necessarily revolutionized air security, commented that today it is the ports that must face this challenge to guarantee the continuity of traffic.
Closing the proceedings with a note of realism was the Maritime Director of Tuscany, Admiral Giovanni Canu. Looking beyond the technical difficulties, Canu recalled that technology always requires the human factor to filter irregularities. “We will not immediately have faster ports,” the Admiral clarified, “but the essential goal is to have safer ports, where the operational slowdown is, at least initially, the necessary cost to guarantee the legality of the common European space.
