‘Pretty shambolic’: new EU border checks cause stress for UK travellers
Britons report that EES digital entry and exit system has led to frustration, visa mix-ups and long queues
On top of fears about extreme heat and possible jet fuel shortages, Britons planning summer holidays in the EU this year had another thing to worry about – long queues and waiting times caused by the bloc’s new border checks.
The EU digital entry and exit system (EES), which requires non-EU citizens to register and be photographed and fingerprinted on arrival and departure from the Schengen zone, has been technically in full force since April after launching last autumn, but has been beset by teething problems.
Despite reports of passengers facing three-hour delays and missed connections, Brussels rejected calls by airports and airlines to suspend the implementation of the scheme over the peak summer period. However, border police have been allowed to relax requirements if queues become unmanageable under an opt-out that expires next month.
Those who shared with the Guardian their experiences of the system since its introduction highlighted a range of problems and snags.
‘We checked in to Europe, but the EES says we haven’t checked out’
One of the main purposes of the system is to track whether non-EU citizens have spent more than their permitted 90 days in the bloc in a rolling 180-day period.
However, Martin Farrall, a retired university professor, says his EES record failed to record his exit from the Schengen zone and he had to chase the authorities to update it.
In May, the 67-year-old and his wife arrived by ferry at Hoek van Holland at the start of their camping trip in Denmark, both with a full residency allowance.
Martin says the Dutch border police enrolled them into EES “But no entry stamp was made on our passports,” he adds.
“On 30 June, 55 days after entry, we returned to the UK on the Dunkerque-Dover ferry. The French border police asked us where and when we entered Schengen, and we were handed back our passports without an exit stamp.”
Once home, Martin checked his residency tally and found that instead of having 35 days left it was rapidly diminishing.
“It appeared that EES had not been updated to show I’d left the Schengen area,” says Martin, who lives in Warwickshire. He was concerned that he would be registered as an “overstayer” at risk of refusal of entry in future.
He reported the error to the Directorate General for Foreign Nationals in France on 13 July but says he has not received a response..
When Martin checked on his day allowance again on 7 August, the EES website said he had zero days left, but when he looked on 17 August it had updated.
“The EES website now claims I have 34 days left to travel in the 180 window! When I checked my wife’s passport she apparently has 90 days left despite us both having the same travel to Schengen history. So God only knows what’s going on.
“I wonder how many other people who were waved through because of the hold-ups may also be in the same position.”
‘The system obviously wasn’t ready – it’s pretty shambolic’
Nadia, from Greater Manchester, thinks the system is not “communicating with other member states”. She made two trips to Schengen areas this summer with very contrasting experiences.
A trip to Tenerife in June was “quite straightforward”, but her experience in July at Frankfurt airport where she was picking up a connecting flight home, was much less so.
“The queue there was ridiculously long, and there was very limited information,” she says. “People were wandering around trying to work out where they needed to go.
“I’m very well travelled and pretty confident, but even I was slightly unsure and was thinking, is there some other queue I should be joining? There was no one nearby to check with without losing your place.”
Eventually, her passport was checked. “He didn’t actually take fingerprints then,” says Nadia, who is a solicitor. “I think the queue was so long they decided to dispense with that.
“It’s the efficiency of the system I question and the fact that individual member states’ systems do not talk to one another. They shouldn’t need to get information again if you have already gone through.
“It’s pretty shambolic, and I think people missing their flights because of it is just not acceptable, especially when there’s no recourse; it’s not your fault.”
Nadia is also unhappy about having to give her fingerprints repeatedly. “I’ve done it in a few countries now, but it’s something I feel very strongly opposed to,” she says.
“This is not in keeping with the intention of the scheme, which suggests that once registered, you should not have to keep re-entering your biometric data. You also wonder where the information is going – who’s seeing it, who else has access to it?”
‘There should be clearer signage about exemptions’
Evie, originally from Manchester but studying in Munich, says her student visa has caused EES confusion.
“In Munich airport, there are TV screens which explain the function of EES as a system to register ‘visitors’. As I hold an extended-stay visa for the purpose of studying, I would not describe myself as a ‘visitor’ as I can stay in Germany for up to 12 months,” the 23-year-old says.
She says that upon seeing she had a British passport, she was often directed toward the EES queue and had to explain her visa situation, after which she “was normally allowed to stand in the queue with everyone else”.
Evie says this has happened “virtually every time” she has flown in and out of Germany – in December, January, February and April – and believes there should be better signposting to avoid mix-ups, especially given unreliable airport wifi makes accessing online information difficult.
‘You could see people getting anxious’
Kevin and his wife, Christine, travelled to Lanzarote in June but struggled to get the machine to register their details.
“The arrivals hall was packed, but there were loads of machines,” the 75-year-old says. “Some were not working. I noticed people getting angry when their fingerprints would not enter. People started holding their fingers in different positions, and when that didn’t work, they would hit the glass harder.”
He says there was “not much assistance to be found” and when all attempts failed, people queued up to “have it done manually at the kiosk”.
“You could see people getting anxious,” says Kevin, who lives with Christine, 73, in Merseyside. He says the machines eventually registered them both.
The couple’s next trip is to Palma for a cruise, and they are bracing themselves for there to be issues. “We’ll be visiting different countries on the cruise,” Kevin says. “What happens then?”
‘The fingerprinting system didn’t work for me’
Martin, 68, a retired IT worker, said he and his wife struggled to operate the screen to register at Schiphol airport in the Netherlands.
“The fingerprinting system didn’t work for me,” says Martin of their trip at the end of April. “My wife had similar issues with her 71-year-old hands. Older people with drier fingers have trouble with touch screens.”
Eventually, Martin, who lives in Stockport, was sent to manual entry “where they forgot to stamp my passport”.
“When exiting Dusseldorf, the Germans got a bit excited about that and asked how we got into Europe,” he adds. “I just said the Dutch didn’t stamp our passports, and they accepted that.
“The interface is poorly laid out and will confuse the less technical I have an IT background, and it feels like the system was not walked through enough times. It’s a mess. It also hasn’t been properly tested for older people.”
‘My wife, being visually impaired, couldn’t find where to look’
Ed Griffiths, 67, a retired IT specialist, says his wife has impaired vision and could not work the machine at Prague airport as they passed through last September as she was unable to read the instructions.
“The photo/fingerprint machine failed for both of us, and we spent one hour 15 minutes standing in a slow queue of confused people waiting for staff to retry it, but my wife, being visually impaired, couldn’t find where to look, so they skipped the photo and she was waved through,” says Ed, who lives in Buckinghamshire. The delay meant their prebooked taxi nearly left without them.
Then the couple were in Milan in March and Ed had to re-register despite already having done so in Prague.
“The machine ignored my previous registration, my fingerprint was asked for and failed, I waited an hour in a queue for manual assistance retry,” he says. His wife, also 67, however, did manage registration and was waved through.
More recently, in Vienna in May an officer supervised the booths for photos and fingerprints. Again, the system ignored his previous registration, but the couple got through in five minutes.
“Twice we have been registered already, and it made no discernible difference,” Ed says. “We have not found assistance at machines, but at booths there has been some help.”