The European Commission has called on member states to clear the airport queues created by the European Union’s new digital border system before the Christmas travel season, placing the blame for months of delays on national governments rather than on the system itself.
European Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner said capitals had signed up to the Entry/Exit System themselves and had been given time to get ready for it, in remarks reported by Politico Europe. He has argued before that the bottlenecks come from thin staffing and weak infrastructure at border posts.
The Entry/Exit System replaced the passport stamp with electronic registration of non-EU travellers, taking four fingerprints and a facial image on first entry. It started on October 12, 2025 and has been fully operational at every external border crossing point since April 10, 2026.
Brunner said the system had logged close to 230 million entries and exits at around 1,500 crossing points. Some 80,000 people were refused entry, among them 2,000 flagged over suspected links to terrorism or organised crime.
Those numbers sit awkwardly beside the scenes on the Commission’s own doorstep. Non-Schengen arrivals at Brussels Airport queued for up to five hours at passport control in the final week of September, the airport confirmed, with technical faults in the system compounding the delays.
Travellers from several countries, including the United States, can no longer move from the registration kiosks straight to automated gates and are sent to staffed booths instead. The airport said work on structural fixes was continuing and that further federal police officers were being trained for border duty.
Zaventem had prepared for the rollout with 12 extra border control booths, facial-recognition cameras in 33 booths and 61 self-service kiosks. Waits still passed three hours at arrivals in March, when Belgium postponed part of the biometric registration to keep the terminal moving.
Airports Council International Europe and the International Air Transport Association have pressed Brussels to let border authorities suspend checks when infrastructure cannot cope. The flexibility granted for the summer expired in early September.
The strain has also delayed the European Travel Information and Authorisation System, the screening scheme meant to follow, which is now reported as unlikely before 2027.
The Commission has been busy elsewhere on the external frontier, proposing in September a Frontex rapid-reaction force able to deploy within 24 hours after the Ceuta invasion. Inside the bloc, Italy is still screening arrivals from Spain two months on from that invasion, with the Commission yet to rule on the controls.
