The deadline for the full implementation of the Europe’s Entry/Exit System (EES), the new EU digital border system, has been postponed from April to September amid concerns over travel disruptions during the summer season, a European Commission spokesperson said on Friday.
The EES, which collects digital personal records of third country nationals travelling to the Schengen area and replaces the manual stamping of passports, has been in operation since October 12th 2025.
The system is being introduced gradually across the 29 countries of the Schengen area (25 EU member states plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein) following several delays in the launch due to IT issues.
The goal was to register a growing proportion of visitors reaching full operation within six months, with the deadline for full implementation being April 2026.
However the deadline has now been pushed back to September to allow ports and airports more time to phase in the checks with the aim of avoiding any summer travel chaos.
At a press conference on Friday, European Commission spokesperson Markus Lammert said that the EES was “successfully launched across Member States” and “this is a very big step forward for the EU and our collective security”.
Lammert then acknowledged that “rolling out such a large-scale system is a complex and complicated task” and that the “progressive rollout with built-in flexibility” gives Member States “the tools necessary to manage any potential problems”.
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“What we see is that initial changes, that are typical for any new system that has to be introduced, have been addressed, and we also see that since the start of the system, this happened largely without major issues, even during the peak holiday period. And of course Member States have continued to work to further improve processing time,” he added.
He then said: “As we know, the gradual rollout runs until April, but since we hear also about concerns regarding the coming summer, there’s even flexibility inbuilt for the summer period, so Member States, if needed, can always prolong this gradual rollout period until September.”
Under the EES, travellers from non-EU and non-Schengen countries, including the UK, have to register fingerprints and facial images the first time they cross an external Schengen border. Self-registration kiosks have been installed at border crossings, with guards overseeing the process – although many are not yet in use. The data is recorded in a Europe-wide database tracking each time visitors enter and exit the Schengen area, to avoid people staying beyond the limits of the 90/180 day rule.
In recent weeks several travel organisations have called for a rethink of the timeline. In December, European airports operators called for an urgent review of the system amid “mounting operational issues” and long processing times for passengers in some locations.
Also at the end of last year, the government of Portugal decided to suspend the EES implementation at Lisbon Airport to reduce waiting times. In Spain, the tourism industry asked for more police and fully functioning passport control machines at airports to ease congestion.
