British passengers and airline analysts have raised concerns about long airport delays at next month’s Winter Olympics in Italy due to new EU border checks.
Since its launch in October, the entry/exit system (EES) requires non-EU nationals travelling to Schengen Area countries to provide facial photos and fingerprint scans.
The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, which take place in north Italy from 6 to 22 February, are due to attract up to two million visitors.
The busiest airport, Milan Malpensa, is expecting over 150,000 fans as well as 15,500 Winter Olympians and officials in the week before the opening ceremony, bringing a large spike in passengers from non-Schengen countries.
Since its launch in October, passengers at airports across Europe have reported long delays from EES, with fears over congestion at next month’s games leading Italy to consider suspending the biometric checks for athletes and officials.
According to reports in the Italian press, the airports where checks would be stopped are Milan Malpensa, Milan Linate, Venice and Verona.
The i Paper understands the suspension has not been confirmed, but that it is one option being discussed to manage delays.
Olympic participants are usually given priority lanes to avoid airport queues, while some athletes will have done the EES checks on earlier European visits.
Ma cosa stanno aspettando a Roma @Viminale @Piantedosim @Palazzo_Chigi a mandare rinforzi #Polizia a #Milano #Malpensa per controlli passaporti? t.co/E9LtQWM6Ws@GiorgiaMeloni @matteosalvinimi @BeppeSala @RegLombardia @cmterzi @NicolaMolteni @SiulpNazionale #avgeek
— Vola Milano Malpensa [MXP] (@VolaMalpensa) January 7, 2026Some Arsenal fans who flew to Italy for Tuesday’s Champions League clash with Inter Milan experienced queues of up to 80 minutes from the new EU border checks.
Graham Stone, 60, a Gunners fan from Highbury, north London, travelled with his son, 21, to Bergamo before flying home from Turin.
He queued at Bergamo for about an hour to have his fingerprint and facial scans, while his son only had his passport stamped manually.
“There were two passport booths processing people with the EES checks and I would say 200 people trying to get processed,” he told The i Paper.
“The issue was it took about two and a half minutes to process every person.”
He added: “Some people took longer than others, which made me wonder if the technology was perfect or not.”
At Turin, his son and about 100 other passengers had to queue for around 80 minutes to go through the border checks, with their Ryanair flight and a BA plane delayed while waiting for dozens of passengers to get through.
“We’d assumed it wouldn’t be a problem, but it was exactly the same problem on the way out,” said Stone.
“I put my passport into the e-gate, and merrily went through. My son put his passport into the gate, and he failed.
“They did the EES process on him, but they did it on the way out, rather than on the way in.
“Suddenly the flight is going ‘boarding, last call’ gate’s closing, so people became rather stressed in that situation.”
Unless EES is waived for February’s Winter Olympics he thinks “queues would be unmanageable with the levels of staffing and technology they have”.
“It looked to me like the delay had doubled as a result of the process,” he said.
“If you were to put the process of even more people coming through that system, it just would not be fit for purpose.”
Milan airports operator SEA said October’s initial launch of EES had already led to a “significant” increase in border control processing times at Malpensa, with the Italian government deploying additional officers for the Winter Olympics.
Why is EES being brought in?
EES, which has been phased in since October, is replacing passport stamping for non-EU citizens.
It is designed to help Brussels track compliance with its rule on staying in Schengen for no more than 90-days in any 180-day period.
British nationals must go through EES checks because, following Brexit, they are non-EU nationals (third-country citizens).
From 9 January, the proportion of non-EU nationals that must undergo the new facial and fingerprint scans climbed from one in 10 to 35 per cent.
By 10 April, 100 per cent of arrivals must submit their biometrics for travel to the Schengen areas.
Member states can partially or fully suspend EES in exceptional circumstances such as long delays.
Last month, the Portuguese government suspended EES at Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado Airport for three months after weeks of chaos that saw passengers stuck in queues of up to seven hours.
Emily Hammond spent 30 to 40 minutes extra going through EES checks at Venice Marco Polo airport after travelling from Stansted on 15 November.
“The passport gate took a very long time to respond to my fingerprints, leaving me trapped inside the gate for uncomfortably long until finally the scan worked,” she said.
“We still had to wait and have our passports manually stamped too, which seemed overkill at that point.
“Passengers in front of me were having passports rejected as a ‘nationality not accepted.'”
Hammond, who regularly travels that route, said the delay was “disappointing”, adding there was no information as to whether passengers already registered with the system would have to register again on a subsequent visit.
She advised passengers against planning a time-sensitive transport connection.
She added: “As the queues built up and bottlenecked at the passport gates where we had to scan our passports, faces and fingerprints with varying success, it began to feel more stressful.
“I would certainly hope that airports will have learned from their experience so far and will make a big effort for the Winter Olympics arrivals.”
The European Commission insists EES has operated “largely without issues” since its launch, with no “significant queues” apart from in limited cases.
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But Saj Ahmad, an airline analyst at StrategicAero Research said it “makes sense” for Italian officials to suspend EES for next month’s Winter Olympics.
“Milan is a key gateway to Italy. The last thing officials want to see is human bottlenecks because of a flawed EES system that is not fit for purpose.
“Suspending its use is the smart approach, but you have to wonder how long it will take, and at what cost, before EES makes good on its promise to make connections and travel easier – because right now, its nothing but a giant mess.”
Italy’s Ministry of the Interior and the Winter Olympics were contacted for comment.
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