Concerns raised as EU Entry Exit System causes three-hour delays at airports 

“Mounting operational issues” with the EU Entry‑Exit System (EES) threatens more disruption into the new year.

The warning ahead of the busy Christmas peak travel period came from European airport trade body ACI Europe.

The organisation revealed that border control processing times at airports increased by up to 70%, with waiting times of up to three hours at peak times. 

Airports in France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Portugal and Spain are being especially impacted with introduction of the digital border checks system which started being introduced across Europe from October 12.

But the deployment of EES is being hampered by regular outages, not enough operational self-service kiosks for passenger registration and data capture, continued unavailability of automated border control gates, “acute” border guard shortages and the lack of an effective pre-registration app.

Just one in 10 travellers are currently required to undergo digital registration but the level is set to rise to 35% by January 9.

Unless the operational issues raised by ACI Europe are not urgently resolved, the situation will “inevitably result in much more severe congestion and systemic disruption for airports and airlines. This will possibly involve serious safety hazards,” director general Olivier Jankovec warned.

He added: “We fully understand and support the importance of the EES and remain fully committed to its implementation. 

“But the EES cannot be about mayhem for travellers and chaos at our airports. 

“If the current operational issues cannot be addressed and the system stabilised by early January, we will need swift action from the European Commission and

Schengen member states to allow additional flexibility in its roll‑out.”

He noted that “significant discomfort is already being inflicted upon travellers, and airport operations impacted with the current threshold for registering third country nationals set at only 10%”. 

The concerns were raised as Eurocontrol disclosed that air traffic control capacity and staffing issues were the top cause for delays, which soared by 43% week on week in the December 8-14 period, with notable issues in Spain and Germany.

Arrival and departure punctuality were 79.6% and 73.6% respectively, “slightly worse” than the same period in 2024 as airline traffic in the year to date recovered to 99.9% of pre-Covid 2029 levels.