As concerns grow over delays linked to the EU's entry-exit system, Independent readers have been sharing what is going wrong at airports across Europe.
After warnings of queues stretching to six hours and dozens of Ryanair passengers being left behind in Athens, many readers said the scheme has become a bureaucratic headache that is causing unnecessary stress for travellers.
Many argued that while Brexit has left British travellers subject to the new checks, the real problem lies with the way the system has been designed and implemented.
Readers questioned why fingerprints and facial data cannot be collected before travel, and why passengers who have already registered their biometrics are still facing lengthy queues and repeated checks.
A common complaint was that technology intended to speed up border crossings appears to be doing the opposite. Commenters shared stories of malfunctioning gates, failed biometric registrations, manual passport inspections and long waits at airports across Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. Some even said they had missed flights despite arriving hours before departure.
Many also warned that airports and rail terminals are struggling to cope with the extra processing time. Readers called for separate queues for first-time and repeat travellers, better staffing and greater flexibility to suspend checks when delays become excessive.
Although opinions differed on how much blame Brexit should shoulder, there was broad agreement on one thing: a system designed to modernise Europe's borders is, for now, creating more confusion, delays and frustration than convenience.
Poorly thought through and badly executed
I realise British citizens are upset because they could have avoided all this nonsense if it weren't for Brexit. That said, I feel this is just poor form from the EU in general in how they implemented this. Take US citizens, for example. After doing your biometrics the first time, why should you have to stand in a long queue on follow-up visits? It feels like it's driven by politics and bureaucracy.
Why aren't there three separate queues: EU citizens, biometrics already submitted, and first-time travellers? Some say a computer, like an e-gate, is technically not allowed to let in a non-EU citizen without a human guard signing off. But why? If you applied for a Schengen visa, you already submitted your passport, your photo and your fingerprints. They have it all on record. Why can't you just scan your passport, scan your fingerprint and pass through? Sure, there will be exceptions, like if someone overstayed. In those scenarios, you get directed to a human. That is probably two per cent of cases.
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Overall, this has been very poorly thought through, fraught with old-fashioned politics, bad logistics and terrible execution, and now it is biting them. I missed a flight the other day. I was at the airport three and a half hours before my flight and still missed it because I was stuck in passport control, even though I had a Schengen visa, which meant they already had everything on record. They need to fix this ASAP!
Technology that doesn’t work
We are constantly told the IT is in a "teething phase" and delays are to be expected, but my experiences over the past year in Spain show a different picture altogether. I am an EU passport holder (Ireland) and, on every occasion I have landed at Barajas (Madrid), whether it's Terminal 1 or Terminal 4, I have found myself being lumped in with the Brits and South Americans in interminable queues.
In one case, a police officer stamped my passport and, when I told him that wasn't necessary, he asked me if I wanted to take it up with his boss. It's time we stopped getting fobbed off. The technology is there – it just doesn't work.
Airports cannot cope with the queues
It’s not just a problem for the passengers. This is a massive issue for the airports themselves. They simply don’t have the space to accommodate all these passengers while they take six hours to get through immigration.
Look at the nightmare that St Pancras has become; last time I took the Eurostar, the queue was all the way along the station concourse and out of the door at the far end. And that was at 7am without EES even being turned on there yet.
This is not a Brexit problem
This is not a Brexit problem, it's an IT implementation problem – even with Brexit, this SHOULD NOT be causing all these problems. If it was designed right, there would BE no delays.
The system is simply badly conceived from the very beginning. All the data they need to collect can be collected by the airlines days or even weeks in advance when you book or check in online.
Terminals in the departure lounge (where everyone wanders about doing nothing for two hours anyway) only need to read the chip in your passport and take a once-in-a-lifetime fingerprint scan, then send it to the EU.
It should take less than ten seconds, and all the technology to do this has been around for at least a decade. There is NO excuse for such a badly thought-out, poorly tested system.
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Register data before travel
There would seem to be no reason whatever why the initial registration of data should happen at the point of departure to the Schengen area – airports, ports and international train stations.
Surely machines could be installed in travel agencies or shopping centres internationally, while updates to data could also be carried out when necessary. Or alternatively, via an app on one's phone.
The delays are absurd, the system ill thought out. Scrap it in its present form.
Is biometric matching really simpler?
“The most challenging part is the first enrolment, that is the moment where fingerprints and facial images will be taken.”
I seriously doubt that.
First visit:
- Scan passport
- Take photo and fingerprints
- Write record to database (trivially fast, one SQL line, INSERT)
Subsequent visits:
- Scan passport
- Take photo and fingerprints (same hardware, same time)
- Look up existing record (SELECT by passport number – indexed, milliseconds)
- Run biometric comparison against stored data (facial recognition and fingerprint matching – this is actually more work than the first visit, not less)
- Check overstay calculation on top of that
The biometric comparison step is not trivial. Facial recognition matching is computationally heavier than just storing data.
The database lookup itself is indeed fast, but the comparison algorithms are doing real work.
Rethink the passenger journey
To mitigate the queues, there needs to be a fundamental rethink of the passenger journey from arriving at a European airport to entering the aircraft.
Bag drops and check-in desks, whether manned or automatic, should open earlier than the usual two hours. Once airside, gate information should be displayed earlier and passport control queue waiting times should be displayed alongside it.
Once at passport control, there should be priority lanes for flights about to board, manned by personnel who check boarding passes. People authorised to suspend the checks if the queues are deemed too long, or the machines have gone down – which they seem to have done on the numerous times I have been to Europe since their introduction – need to be on hand and visible to make that decision.
If you do miss your flight, airline staff should be trained to deal with passengers immediately and rebook them on later flights, not hide away or refuse to engage with passengers.
European and British politicians should not ignore the pain and distress this is causing and come to some arrangement to mitigate it. Europe needs our tourism and we need our holidays, so common sense needs to prevail and old or new enmities need to be buried.
Why am I doing it every time?
"The digital border management for all ‘third-country nationals’ to the Schengen Area requires fingerprints and facial biometrics upon first entry."
First entry WHEN?
Since February, we have gone through Athens twice, Rome and Venice – and needed to do it each time on arrival.
Athens the second time was only a few weeks after the previous visit and nothing was working – queues and queue managers? Ninety minutes queuing to get to the immigration desk!
In the end, the guy on the desk just checked you over and stamped the passport as before – manually.
Surely, if it is once at first point of entry, then if you have done it once your biometrics are on the system and you should then have a different booth to speed up what should now be a formality?
I get through and my wife's passport keeps getting rejected and she has to go to the back of another endless queue.
The "technology" is NAFF!!!
Data timing out
Just came back from Madeira. On arrival we queued up to register our biometric data and most people were rejected and had to be registered manually.
On departure we tried to use the EES gates but again, rejected. Local staff claim there is too much data being electronically transferred so the individual transactions "time out" and don't get registered.
Some of the comments have been edited for this article for brevity and clarity.
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