EU's new border system triples UK passport wait times at European airports

British travelers heading to Europe this summer are bracing for a new reality at passport control: waits that have nearly tripled since the EU rolled out its Entry Exit System. At Rome's Fiumicino airport, one of Europe's busiest hubs, the time it takes UK nationals to clear the border has stretched from seven minutes to twenty. For some passengers, the delays have stretched far longer—an hour, sometimes two—long enough to miss connecting flights and derail carefully planned itineraries.

The Entry Exit System, or EES, is a digital registration requirement for anyone from outside the EU entering the Schengen zone, a 29-country area of largely borderless travel. When you arrive, you register your fingerprints and photograph. When you leave, the system checks you out. It sounds straightforward. In practice, it has become a bottleneck. The system began rolling out in October, phased in across European airports, and the friction has only grown as summer travel season approaches. Ryanair, the continent's largest budget airline, issued a blunt warning this week: passengers should arrive early and prepare themselves for extended waits.

On the ground in Rome, the impact is visible and audible. Carl, traveling from Yorkshire with his family, spent two hours from the moment his plane touched down until he cleared passport control with his children. David, visiting from the US with his wife, missed his car and driver while waiting roughly an hour. Barry from Bracknell reported 45 to 50 minutes at another airport where some of the automated machines had stopped working. These are not outliers. In Barcelona, in Faro, in airports across the continent, passengers are reporting similar delays—queues that stretch nearly as long as the flights themselves.

The technical architecture of EES is partly to blame. The system relies on standalone automated kiosks—machines that cost Rome's airport €12 million to install—but these have proven impractical for handling the volume of passengers. Rome has since integrated the registration process into its existing passport e-gates, a modification that Ivan Bassato, the airport's Chief Aviation Officer, says has helped significantly. Yet even with this improvement, the system remains slower and more cumbersome than what travelers experienced before. Bassato is blunt about the gap: "We are not at the point where you have the same quality of the process as before the EES." For an airport that prides itself on technological sophistication, the situation is unacceptable. He is calling for urgent fixes, particularly the removal of redundant steps in the registration process.

The technical problems run deeper than workflow design. Pedro Oliveira, who oversees border control at Portugal's Faro airport, told the BBC that the EU's IT infrastructure itself has bugs. Servers across member states are interconnected, meaning a crash in Warsaw can ripple through to Portugal. The system has experienced outages affecting multiple countries simultaneously, requiring minutes to reboot. Oliveira noted that these incidents are becoming less frequent, but they remain a vulnerability during peak travel periods. At Faro, what used to be a ten-minute queue now regularly stretches past thirty minutes, though Oliveira insists waits exceeding an hour are rare—a qualifier that rings hollow to travelers who have experienced exactly that.

Airport and airline officials have been pressing the European Commission to allow countries to temporarily suspend EES during the busiest travel periods, a proactive measure that would give the system breathing room. A meeting earlier this month produced no change in policy. The Commission has stated that disruption is limited at most EU airports and pledged continued support for implementation, but has not addressed the core request for flexibility. Meanwhile, Ivan Bassato has another suggestion: more countries should adopt the EU's pre-registration app, which allows travelers to submit their biometric data before arrival. Currently, only Sweden and Portugal are using it. Expanding this option could distribute the processing load and reduce bottlenecks at the border itself.

As July deepens and August approaches, the summer travel season is entering its peak. Ryanair's warning to passengers—allow extra time, prepare for extended waits—is not hyperbole. It is a realistic assessment of what the system currently delivers. The Entry Exit System was designed to strengthen security and manage movement across the Schengen zone. Instead, it has created a new kind of friction, one that leaves travelers frustrated, sometimes stranded, and questioning whether the trade-off was worth it. The European Commission says it will continue supporting member states. What remains unclear is whether that support will arrive in time to prevent a summer of disrupted travel.