IBM, Atos and Leonardo hauled into EU court over border tech delays
The EU's IT agency has taken IBM, Atos and Leonardo to court in Estonia over years of delays building the bloc's new Entry/Exit System. EU-Lisa says it pulled the trigger in December 2025 to protect its financial interests, while the consortium has blamed the pandemic and unrealistic timelines.
- 2 sources report it: breakingthenews.net, theguardian.com.
- The source published it on Nov 9, 2026 at 5:16 AM.
Nothing open. Every check passed.
EU-Lisa, the bloc's agency for large-scale IT systems, filed the suit in Estonia in December 2025, according to The Financial Times, which cited court confirmations and agency records. It targets IBM and its European partners Atos and Leonardo over the troubled build of the Entry/Exit System, the EU's planned digital border check platform.
The agency didn't mince words about why it went to court. It said it had 'activated the available contractual and legal remedies to protect its financial interests,' per the FT. The filing lands after years of blown deadlines and a running fight over penalties written into the contract.
The consortium had warned the timetable was unrealistic well before the lawyers got involved. In a 2022 letter, the partners wrote that 'ignoring reality is not prudent and will not help to achieve the plan,' and pinned the slippage on 'external factors' — the pandemic among them.
The EES was originally meant to go live in 2022. That target has long since passed, and the dispute is now playing out in an Estonian court rather than at a project review meeting.
TopicsIBM · Atos · Leonardo · EU-Lisa · Entry/Exit System · Financial Times · Estonia
Written by Paparazzi with AI. Not financial advice.
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