The new border system is lengthening airport queues

The European entry and exit system, the EES, has appreciably increased waiting times at airports across the continent. July's figures show the practical cost of a reform that on paper was meant to speed up checks.

At Frankfurt the average wait for third-country nationals reached 120 minutes, against 60 in the same month last year. At Munich it went from 31 to 60 minutes. At Amsterdam, from 80 to 120. In Switzerland the picture is less severe but not painless: Zurich records waits of one to two hours when several flights land at once, while Geneva reached two and a half hours during the January and February holidays.

The system has been fully operational since 10 April 2026 and electronically records the entries and exits of third-country nationals at Schengen's external borders, replacing the passport stamp. Registration covers personal data, a photograph and fingerprints. Switzerland introduced it in October 2025.

Seventy seconds per person

The number that explains the queues is the average registration time: about 70 seconds per person. On an intercontinental flight with three hundred passengers subject to the procedure, registration alone takes more than five hours of desk work. If three aircraft land within the same half hour, the queue forms regardless of the staff's goodwill.

Around 160 million registrations have been carried out since launch. That figure has a positive side: once a file has been created, the same person's later crossings should be quicker. The bottleneck therefore concerns the start-up phase, but this phase has lasted for months and nobody has yet said when it will end.

In the meantime, government is by exception. Switzerland and eight EU member states have requested an extension of the temporary flexibilities, including suspending fingerprint collection during peak hours. The exemptions were due to expire in September. A security system applied only in part during the busiest hours raises a legitimate question about the relationship between the cost imposed and the benefit obtained.

Airlines have made themselves heard. Ryanair openly criticised the system's performance, while British Airways reported difficulties at some airports without significant operational consequences. For carriers the issue is not theoretical: missed connections and rebooked passengers carry a cost that ends up on the ticket.

For travellers departing from Switzerland the effect is indirect but real. Many intercontinental connections run through Frankfurt or Amsterdam, and two hours of waiting at the border make unusable the short transfer times that made those routes competitive.