Travellers to Europe who have already endured long queues for biometric processing under the Entry/Exit System (EES) are being forced to repeat the checks on multiple journeys amid claims their data is being lost in the system.
Under EES, non-EU nationals heading to Schengen-area countries are asked to submit facial scans and fingerprints which are supposed to valid for three years once logged within the system.
But passengers have reported having to carry out the biometric registrations on multiple visits to the EU, adding to delays caused by the checks.
The airline industry’s main trade body, International Air Transport Association, said waits of around four hours had already been recorded during peak periods and could increase to six hours in some airports this summer.
It comes after it was reported that some EES kiosks have been unable to upload fingerprints and facial images to a central database, resulting in biometric data being deleted as it has nowhere to go.
Tens of millions of Britons are expected to travel to EU countries this summer, with travel bosses concerned that if passengers who have previously passed through EES cannot skip the queues, it could exacerbate delays.
Robert Griggs, policy and public affairs director at Airlines UK, the main trade association for UK-registered carriers, said passengers shouldn’t have to be registering their EES biometrics more than once.
“I don’t think we know why at the moment. We haven’t had an explanation for that. But something isn’t working properly if that’s happening,” he said.
Dean Bubley, 55, from London, travels every week between Europe and the US and has seen a noticeable jump in queueing times at EU airports from EES, with the system causing a “real pain” in the last couple of months.
At Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, he was told by a border guard that three EES profiles had been created for him under one passport when he asked why he kept having to register biometrics.
He added it appears to be a “complete lottery” when he arrives at EU airports whether he is asked again to have his face scanned and his fingerprints taken or just waved through.
British holidaymakers arriving at airports like Geneva have been stuck in hour-long queues after arriving in Europe (Photo: Paul Moston)He said: “The system doesn’t work. My understanding was that you’re supposed to register once, and then you can use the e-gates.
“But in half the airports I go to, they just funnel everyone through the registration process and the queue if you’re from non-EU and they don’t let you go to the e-gates.
“Even if they do, it seems to be random as to whether they work once you’ve registered with EES, particularly if you’re a frequent traveller.”
He questioned whether some suppliers’ equipment and software functioned better than others.
“In Schipol they do have e-gates for already registered people, but they didn’t work for me, and said go for manual inspection instead,” he said.
“I asked at Schipol why this doesn’t work and she looked at my passport and said I had multiple profiles.”
Jim Liddle, 58, was stuck in “horrendous” EES queues of more than an hour after landing at Palma de Mallorca in May.
“One of the things I did notice when we were at Mallorca was that even though we’d registered, they didn’t seem to have a process to direct people who’d registered straight to the gates,” he said.
“You had to queue up and go through the whole registration process again.”
Confusion over ‘lost’ data
Under the EES two-step process, a non-EU traveller’s passport is first scanned and the details uploaded to eu-Lisa, the EU body responsible for developing and operating the system, where a passenger file is created.
Then, if they haven’t already registered, passengers’ biometric details – fingerprints and facial scans – are taken and sent to eu-Lisa.
A report in The Sunday Times, said end-to-end testing had not been carried out on the technology before its launch, with some elements of the software failing to connect properly and causing passenger details to be lost.
A source involved with testing EES disputed claims that adequate testing had not been carried out. They told The i Paper: “I don’t think it will be getting deliberately deleted. I think it’ll just not be getting sent on.
“I think there’s a problem between the national system sending, because if it arrives in the central system, it will be stored.”
Testing of the system had resulted in the Netherlands, France and Germany admitting in September 2024, that it was not ready to go ahead with EES, the source said. Despite an initial launch date of 2020, EES was finally rolled out in late 2025 and fully implemented in April.
But, there were concerns some countries had been “lying” about their results during testing of the system, the source said.
Some countries appeared to be exaggerating “their ability to really physically handle the data coming from their ports” and not admitting using automated testing systems, they added.
This week, the head of Europe’s main airport trade body warned urgent action was needed to prevent “further chaos” from EES.
Stefan Schulte, the president of ACI Europe, said: “EES is what keeps me and many other airport CEOs across Europe awake at night.
“Passengers are queueing for hours at peak traffic times and I just do not know how we will be able to cope in the coming weeks with the expected increase in traffic.”
Meanwhile, Rome’s airports may have to suspend EES to avoid a “disaster” during the peak summer travel period, warned Troncone, of Aeroporti di Roma, which operates Fiumicino and Ciampino airports.
Greece has also backtracked on plans to exempt British travellers from the new EU border checks, having previously said it would pull out of the system to spare tourists long queues.
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