The EU has turned down requests from airports and airlines to suspend the new entry/exit system (EES) despite acknowledged queue issues at 20 “difficult spots.”
The Union has not published a list naming every specific border outpost, updates from the European Commission, airline warnings (such as from Ryanair), and airport data identify these 20 difficult spots as falling into three distinct geographical categories:
- Small or mid-sized airports that handle massive waves of non-EU holidaymakers (particularly British and Irish tourists) are suffering the worst queue chaos because they lack the physical floor space to process thousands of biometric registrations simultaneously. Examples are Tenerife South Airport, Palma de Mallorca Airport, Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport, Málaga-Costa del Sol Airport, César Manrique-Lanzarote Airport, Fuerteventura Airport, Bergamo Il Caravaggio International Airport, Milan Linate Airport, Faro International Airport, Paris Beauvais Airportm Kraków John Paul II International Airport, Berlin Brandenburg Airport.
- Large-scale international airports are struggling with “spaghetti-like” queues because of technical sync issues between their vast infrastructure and the central EU database. Examples include Lisbon Humberto Delgado Airport, Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Brussels Airport, Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport
- English Channel Crossings which feature French border control operating directly on British soil, resulting in severe space constraints and technology failure points. Examples include Port of Dover, Folkestone, and Saint Pancras International Station where there are high-density pedestrian bottlenecks before boarding trains to Paris and Brussels.
The system requires non-EU passengers to register fingerprints and facial images. With peak summer holidays approaching, concerns remain over delays and missed connections in popular destinations. Irish passengers are largely unaffected directly but may face knock-on chaos at European hubs. EU officials describe the system as not perfect yet say full suspension is not possible or needed, with measures to ease pressure at problem sites. The controls aim to strengthen security following past terror incidents.
EU officials declared that a full suspension is “not needed” and “not possible,” warning that shutting down the system selectively would create a worse situation by leaving travelers stranded across different border points. While acknowledging that the system is “not perfect” and that there are currently 20 “difficult spots” plagued by queues out of 1,500 total crossing points, the bloc maintains that the digital infrastructure is a permanent safety requirement that cannot be abandoned.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA), along with ACI Europe and Airlines for Europe (A4E), issued a joint appeal warning that the system has hit a “critical point”. Non-EU passengers are facing border control queues lasting anywhere from two to five hours during high-traffic intervals. The gridlock has caused wave after wave of missed flight connections, forcing aircraft to depart half-empty.
Massive delays are highly concentrated in prominent tourist hubs across Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Belgium. Ryanair specifically flagged heavy disruptions at holiday destinations like Alicante, Málaga, and Palma.
Aviation bodies have blamed three fundamental bottlenecks for the breakdown at immigration counters: Border checkpoints lack the staff numbers required to handle manual entry steps when automation fails. The time required to register initial digital biometrics—fingerprints and facial scans—takes significantly longer than old passport stamps. And very few travelers are utilising the pre-registration mobile app meant to expedite checkpoint traffic. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Instead of scrapping the system for the summer, the EU is relying on localised, incremental mitigation strategies, proposing extra personnel to bottleneck locations, including sending 50 Frontex border agency staff to boost capacity at Brussels Airport, and reminding states that under EES regulations, individual airports can temporarily pause biometric checks and revert to standard passport rules if lines become completely unmanageable.
The option of flexibility for individual states is legally scheduled to expire in September 2026, making a permanent solution urgent.
