One year on since the introduction of the EU's EES digital border system, the European airports and airlines association has called on EU authorities to take action to ease ongoing congestion at Schengen external border crossings that has led to 5-hour waits in some cases.
European airport and airlines want authorities to accelerate automated border control for third-country nationals and rethink the “Travel to Europe” app to ease congestion at Schengen external border crossings.
The Entry/Exit System (EES), which records each entry and exit of non-EU short-term visitors to the Schengen area, was introduced on October 12th 2025 and was then officially fully implemented in April - albeit checks were paused in many places over summer and have not been fully enforced at the major cross-Channel ports.
The system requires passengers to register fingerprints and facial images the first time they cross an external Schengen border. This has caused delays and disruption at a number for border crossing points since the roll out, particularly at certain airports in Italy and Spain.
Two organisations representing airports and airlines, the European region of Airports Council International (ACI Europe) and Airlines for Europe (A4E), argued on Monday that the situation at borders was still causing chaos for many passengers.
"Nearly six months after the full implementation of the EES waiting times remain unacceptably high – reaching up to five hours at peak traffic times in the most extreme cases – and still routinely exceeding two hours," they said.
"This is despite considerable efforts from border control authorities to address the situation with the full support of airports.
"The resulting queues keep exposing passengers to unnecessary hardship – including missing flights and connections – creating severe congestion across terminals and putting exceptional pressure on border guards, airport and airline staff."
“The EES has strengthened the security of Europe’s external borders, that is a clear achievement. But six months into its full rollout, the system is not delivering on efficient border crossings and the promise of faster, more seamless travel remains unmet,” the groups said in a statement.
The groups blamed EES “structural shortcomings”, such as the lack of enough border control staff, instability of the IT systems gathering the data, the limited deployment of self-service kiosks and automated border control gates, and the functioning of the Travel to Europe app for remote pre-enrolment.
READ MORE: Which European countries are using the EES pre-registration app?
The groups added that for the EES to work, verification of biometric data should be optimised, “double verification”– at a self-service kiosk and by a guard – should be eliminated, and the creation of duplicate EES profiles prevented.
Also, the possibility for national authorities to partially suspend the EES in case of long queues should be restored and remain in place indefinitely. Under current rules, this safeguard ended after the summer.
Meanwhile, in an interview with Politico, EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner said the responsibility lies on EU Member States and urged them to prevent travellers’ congestion during the Christmas holidays.
“Member states had enough time to prepare themselves for this system. They agreed on the system… it's up to the Member States to do their job,” the Commissioner told Politico.
The EES is operated in the 29 countries of the Schengen area (25 EU member states plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein). It was designed to avoid visitors staying in the Schengen area beyond the 90/180-day limit.
Since its introduction, the EES has recorded almost 230 million entries and exits to the Schengen area, and 80,000 refused entries, of which 2,000 were due to security threats, the Commissioner revealed.