The stamp in the passport is gone, replaced by a database. For travelers flying from Los Angeles to Europe this summer, the practical consequence is time spent standing in an immigration hall.
What changed
The European Union's Entry/Exit System records the biometric details of non-EU travelers crossing Schengen borders. It captures name, travel document data, fingerprints and a facial image, along with each entry and exit, and it exists largely to enforce the 90-day limit on short stays by tracking who is still inside the zone.
The European Commission phased the system in from October 2025 and brought it to full operation in April 2026, across the Schengen countries.
American passport holders are third-country nationals under these rules, so it applies to essentially every leisure and business traveler heading from LAX to Paris, Rome, Madrid, Amsterdam or Frankfurt.
What happens at the border
The first crossing is the slow one. Travelers with a biometric passport can generally use self-service kiosks; those without go to a staffed booth where an officer captures the fingerprints and photograph. Children under 12 provide a facial image but not fingerprints.
The record is retained for three years. Within that window a return trip is a verification rather than a fresh enrollment, which is faster.
How long the waits actually are
Figures vary a great deal by source and airport, and it is worth being precise about who is claiming what rather than picking one number.
Euronews reported waits regularly reaching about two hours at peak periods. ACI Europe, the airport trade body, described processing times rising by as much as 70 percent with peak waits around three hours, and attributed the problem to system outages, configuration faults, insufficient border staffing and an incomplete rollout of kiosks. Forbes reported delays commonly running one to four hours, with some cases as long as six.
The most concrete data point is a decision rather than an estimate: Lisbon Airport suspended EES biometric checks for three months after passengers faced queues reported at seven hours.
Airports in France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain have been among the worst affected, with the Netherlands also reporting congestion.
The dispute
The Commission's position is that the system is working as designed and improves security and enforcement of stay limits.
The aviation industry disagrees about the rollout, if not the goal. ACI Europe, Airlines for Europe and IATA jointly called for an urgent review this month, describing severe disruption for travelers. Their argument is not that biometric borders are wrong in principle but that the infrastructure and staffing were not ready for the volume.
Both things can be true, and for a traveler in a queue the distinction is academic.
What to do about it
Build in more time for the first crossing. If the itinerary involves a connection inside Schengen, the immigration queue sits between the two flights and a 90-minute layover that used to work may not.
A nonstop to the final destination avoids the problem entirely, because passport control then happens after the last flight rather than between two.
Connecting through London or Dublin sidesteps EES, since neither is in the Schengen area, though British and Irish entry requirements apply instead.
Check the passport. A biometric passport opens the kiosk lane, which moves faster than the staffed booths.
Reconsider tight connections generally this season. Missed connections caused by immigration delays are usually the passenger's problem rather than the airline's, so the cost of a two-hour buffer is smaller than the cost of a rebooking.
Industry groups expect the delays to ease as staffing catches up and more kiosks come online. That is a forecast, not a schedule, and it does not help anyone flying in August.
