Nine states press for border delay

When the EU switched on its digital border system, the easy assumption was that the newer Schengen members would be the ones caught out. Nine months later, that assumption looks too neat. Croatia, which only joined Schengen in 2023, says the Entry/Exit System (EES) is working smoothly at its borders. The countries asking Brussels for emergency relief are Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands and Portugal, together with Switzerland (Euronews, Travel Tomorrow).

EES replaced the old passport stamp with an electronic record for every non-EU traveller entering or leaving the Schengen area. On first registration, border officers take a facial image and fingerprints (EES Regulation). The system went live in October 2025. EU law set the rules, the EU’s IT agency eu-LISA built and runs the shared database, but national border authorities still carry out the checks at each airport, port and land crossing. That division of responsibility is now the heart of the problem.

For Malta, this is not a distant border debate. The external Schengen border is at Malta International Airport and at the ports, including the cruise and ferry traffic that feeds Valletta’s tourism economy. A technical delay at passport control is quickly felt by airlines, hotels, language schools, taxi operators and families waiting at arrivals.

Five Hours at the Gate

The first biometric enrolment takes about 60 to 90 seconds per traveller, according to French operational estimates (Le Monde). That sounds manageable until it is multiplied by a summer wave of flights. Then the queue does not grow in a straight line; it spills backwards through the terminal.

French airports have reported waits of up to five hours and missed connections (Ouest-France). Berlin Brandenburg saw non-EU passengers waiting up to two hours, according to its CEO Aletta von Massenbach (Berliner Zeitung). Greek island airports, heavily exposed to British tourist traffic, are facing the same pressure (The Guardian).

There is still no comprehensive public data on waiting times, kiosk uptime or enrolment error rates across Schengen border points. Without that, both official talk of minor teething problems and claims of system-wide failure rest too much on selected examples. Malta’s inclusion among the countries asking for relief tells its own story, but it does not tell us whether the problem is hardware, staffing, training, airport layout or all of them together.

What the Nine Countries Want

The nine countries are not asking Brussels to scrap EES. Their request is more limited: extend the grace period, granted by the Commission when the system launched, which allows border officers to pause biometric capture during extreme congestion while still recording entries and exits electronically. That grace period expires on 6 September (Connexion).

The Commission has refused a blanket suspension. Its argument is that the delays reflect national staffing gaps, not a flaw in the shared system (CNN Greece). Croatia’s interior minister Davor Božinović has pushed the same line, saying his country prepared properly and is not seeing major problems. From a state that spent years being judged by older members on whether it could manage a Schengen border, the message is pointed: the system works when governments do the preparatory work.

The strongest criticism comes from the other direction. Fraport Greece CEO Alexander Zinell has called EES fundamentally flawed and argued for a full redesign, including pre-registration before travel rather than processing every new traveller at the booth (The Guardian, Newsbeast). Greek airports also lack enough trained border staff, a national weakness that EES did not create but has made harder to hide (Dnews).

What September Settles

The 6 September deadline now forces the Commission to choose. If the grace period expires without an extension, every Schengen external-border crossing must run full biometric enrolment even at peak volume. If it is extended, biometric capture becomes conditional when pressure builds. That weakens the central promise of EES: verified entry and exit records for every non-EU traveller.

The disruption has probably already pushed ETIAS, the separate pre-travel authorisation system, into 2027, although the EU’s official timeline still says late 2026 (travel-europe.europa.eu, Euronews).

The legal case for EES is strong, and the security logic is not hard to understand. Schengen’s internal free movement depends politically on the external border being managed consistently. But the EU wrote one common rule and left delivery to 29 different sets of real airports, ports and border posts. The same regulation has produced smooth checks in Zagreb and five-hour queues in Paris. That capacity gap is now Brussels’ problem too.