The new system has been causing anxiety among many people preparing for their summer holidays
EES machines at Porto Airport in Portugal(Image: Howard Lloyd)
A respected travel journalist says the European Union’s new Entry/Exit System (EES) may be suspended for the whole summer amid reports of chaos and delays at airports. Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Simon Calder – who has described the system as ‘passport roulette’ – said that, while some places had done ‘really well’, others were ‘struggling.
EES is an automated system that is gradually replacing traditional stamps in passports. It involves people from third-party countries such as the UK having their fingerprints registered and photograph taken to enter the Schengen Area, which consists of 29 European countries, mainly in the EU.
For most UK travellers, the process is done at foreign airports. The process saw a soft introduction in October 2025 and was supposed to become fully operational at all borders on April 10, 2026.
However, there have been reports of passengers missing flights and long queues at airports as systems are overwhelmed by the numbers of people looking to register. A number of countries have suspended EES at certain times, with Greece postponing the system for UK travellers for the summer to improve travellers’ experiences.
Portugal has suspended EES for prolonged periods of time to facilitate travel to and from the country, with rumours that Italy may follow suit. Mr Calder said it was not out of the question
“It was always going to be really exciting to see what happens when you roll out a digital borders scheme and you ask 29 national governments to implement it,” Mr Calder said. “They have all gone their own way.
“Some of them have done it really well. Others, well, they are still struggling and we might find that, actually, the whole scheme gets put on a sort of hold for the rest of the summer.
“That’s certainly what a lot of airlines and train operators would like, not to mention the Port of Dover, where they haven’t even started taking biometrics from motorists yet.”
What’s the problem?
Headlines were made in April 2026 when passengers for both Ryanair and easyJet missed their flights from different Milan airports due to EES difficulties. Video of one of the incidents showed a crowd that formed in Milan Bergamo, showing frustrated passengers telling staff that they had been waiting at the gate for more than an hour, and asking what they should do.
It is thought that roughly 30 passengers missed their flight. Ryanair said in a statement: “Due to passport control delays at Milan Bergamo Airport on 16 April, a number of passengers missed this flight from Milan to Manchester.”
One passenger said they were forced to wait until the plane had taken off, before being told they would have to book their own flights home. A number of people on a Ryanair flight from Tenerife South to East Midlands on April 10 also missed their flight home and again blamed passport control delays.
Ryanair issued a scathing message on social media recently, calling for the EES rollout to be suspended until September. The budget airline slammed France, Portugal, Poland, Italy, Spain, and Germany for failing to ‘ensure that adequate staffing, system readiness, or kiosks are in place’.
Describing the system as ‘half-baked’, the Ryanair statement said: “Despite knowing for over three years that EES would become fully operational from 10 April 2026, France, Portugal, Poland, Italy, Spain, and Germany have failed to ensure that adequate staffing, system readiness, or kiosks are in place.
“As a result, passengers are suffering long passport control queues and, in some cases, missing their flights.
“Ryanair calls on these EU Governments to suspend the rollout of the EU’s passport control Entry/Exit System (EES) until September to ensure that passengers are not needlessly forced to suffer long passport control queue delays at European airports during the peak summer season.”
