NextFin News - Europe's summer travel season is opening with a border-control problem measured in hours. Berlin Airport boss Aletta von Massenbach said non-EU passengers are waiting up to two hours under the European Union's Entry/Exit System, and she warned the situation is "not bearable over the summer." In one Berlin terminal used by Ryanair and Wizz Air, she said the queues can run from an hour to two hours, a delay long enough to turn a routine arrival into a stressful airport experience before the holiday peak has even fully arrived.
The concern is not about a vague pilot project. The Entry/Exit System, or EES, has been fully operational since April and now applies to travellers from outside the bloc entering most European countries. Instead of a simple passport stamp, passengers must register biometric information when they cross the border, and the data are checked again when they leave. The policy is designed to modernise border control, but the early operating experience is already producing long queues at a moment when airports need the process to be as predictable and fast as possible.
Von Massenbach's comments show why the issue is becoming sensitive quickly. The Berlin airport chief said the system is complicated by different sub-systems across member states, which makes smooth processing harder rather than easier. That is not a theoretical objection. It is visible at the passenger level in waits measured in hours, not minutes, and in a border process that still looks fragile enough to worry airport operators before the busiest weeks of the summer season.
The problem is also appearing on another major route into the Schengen area. Port of Dover chief executive Doug Bannister told lawmakers that "time is rapidly running out" to fix the EES setup for French border checks at the port. Dover has built a new processing area with 84 kiosks to record fingerprints and photographs, but the technology cannot yet be activated. That makes the issue more than a Berlin complaint: it is now a cross-border infrastructure problem at a key gateway for British and European holiday traffic.
A Border System That Has Started, But Has Not Settled
The first judgment is straightforward: EES has moved from policy design into live operation, but it has not yet settled into a smooth daily rhythm. The official purpose of the system is clear enough. The European Commission says EES is an automated IT system for registering non-EU nationals travelling for a short stay each time they cross the external borders of 29 European countries. In other words, the structure is meant to be comprehensive, consistent and durable. The early reality described by airport leaders is less tidy.
That gap matters because border control is one of the few parts of the travel chain where a small delay can cascade quickly. When non-EU passengers face up to two hours in a queue, the process stops being a minor inconvenience and starts becoming an operational constraint. A passenger arriving at the airport on time can still end up late for boarding. A terminal can look fully functional on paper and still be under pressure if the border step is the slowest part of the journey.
Von Massenbach's warning is therefore useful because it is specific. She did not say the system was failing everywhere. She said there are stretches in Berlin where waits run between "an hour to two hours," and that such conditions are not bearable over the summer. That is a much more precise complaint than a general call for improvement. It says the problem is capacity, timing and user flow, not merely the presence of new technology.
"There are so many sub-systems for each and every member state," said Aletta von Massenbach, chief executive of Berlin Airport. "We see that the complexity doesn't really support smooth processing at the border."
That line gets to the heart of the matter. A border system can be efficient in theory and still feel slow in practice if implementation varies by country, airport or terminal. From the traveller's perspective, the distinction hardly matters. The queue is the queue. But from the operational perspective, the distinction is crucial because it determines whether the system can be scaled without repeated disruption.
That is why airport bosses are pushing the issue now rather than waiting for the end of the summer season. If the first months of live use already produce waits of up to two hours, the risk is that the busiest part of the year will expose every weakness at once. When traffic is lighter, delays can be absorbed. When traffic is heavy, the same delay becomes more visible, more expensive and more damaging to the reputation of the airport and the route network around it.
Why Peak Summer Turns a Delay Into a Policy Problem
The second judgment is that summer does not simply add more passengers; it changes the politics of delay. In calmer periods, a border queue might be treated as a temporary inconvenience while the system beds in. During the holiday peak, the same queue can become a public test of whether a new policy is ready for mass use. That is why von Massenbach's warning matters beyond Berlin. It is a signal that the rollout is being judged not by its design goals, but by how it behaves when terminals are full and travellers are impatient.
The BBC report included one example that shows how quickly frustration can turn into real cost. Anne Robinson from Dunbarton said she and her 13-year-old son missed their flight home from Rome after waiting about 90 minutes to get into the city and then finding many of the machines out of order when they returned to the airport. She said they had arrived three-and-a-half hours before departure, still missed the flight and paid £250 for a replacement ticket two days later. That is a reminder that border delays do not stay inside the border lane; they spill into family budgets, insurance claims and lost time.
Those experiences are the reason the issue is attracting so much attention from airports and airlines. The policy case for EES is not hard to understand. Governments want better visibility over when non-EU visitors enter and leave the Schengen area, and a biometric system can make that tracking more systematic than manual stamping. But the business case for the travel sector depends on the system being fast enough that it does not itself become a deterrent. If the process is seen as cumbersome, the security gain starts competing with the commercial cost.
That tension is also why the Port of Dover matters. The port has already invested in 84 kiosks to record fingerprints and photographs, but those kiosks cannot yet be used because the relevant technology cannot be activated. In practical terms, that means physical capacity exists but the system cannot yet draw on it. It is a useful illustration of why border modernisation is rarely just a hardware problem. Software readiness, jurisdictional responsibility and operational activation all have to line up at the same time.
"Time is rapidly running out," said Doug Bannister, chief executive of the Port of Dover, as he warned lawmakers that the port still lacks a working EES setup for French border checks.
Dover's warning matters because it is tied to a specific timeline: the summer travel surge is already close. If the system is not ready, the first people to feel the strain will be travellers, but the wider cost will fall on airlines, ports and airports that have to manage complaints and recover schedules in real time. The border process becomes an airport process, then a route process, then a reputational issue for the whole network.
In that sense, EES is not just a border policy. It is a test of whether a digital state can be made visible to millions of passengers without slowing the entire travel chain. The answer in Berlin and at Dover is not yet reassuring.
What Happens If the Commission Leaves It Too Late
The third judgment is that the European Commission still has room to respond, but the window for a calm fix is narrowing. The Commission says it is willing to offer more support, which suggests the rollout is not being treated as closed or irreversible. That leaves several options open: better coordination across member states, more practical contingency planning at overloaded airports and a more flexible approach where passenger volumes exceed the current setup's capacity.
That flexibility would not mean abandoning the system. It would mean recognising a basic truth of airport operations: the same process does not work equally well everywhere, especially during peak season. A large hub with more staffing and more room to absorb traffic can handle a new border regime differently from a smaller or more congested airport. If the policy is to avoid becoming a summer disruption story, the implementation has to reflect those differences.
The Commission's challenge is that delayed action can quickly become visible action. If the system continues to produce queues measured in hours, the debate will shift from technical readiness to political embarrassment. Once that happens, the argument stops being about biometric registration and starts being about whether Brussels moved too fast for the infrastructure around it. That is a far harder problem to manage because the issue is then no longer the concept, but the execution.
Airports and airlines are already trying to shape that response. They are not demanding the end of EES. They are asking for a pragmatic approach that keeps the security benefits while reducing the likelihood that passengers spend the start of their holiday in a queue. The logic is simple: if border control works, most travellers should barely notice it. If it becomes the most memorable part of the trip, the system has lost part of its value.
The broader implication is that the summer will now serve as a live stress test for European border modernisation. If queues shorten and the kiosks come online smoothly, EES may settle into the background. If not, the current complaints could harden into a lasting argument that the rollout needs a slower pace and more local flexibility.
For now, the message from airport managers is blunt. The system may be modern, but it is not yet behaving like a mature piece of travel infrastructure. Until that changes, the holiday queue is the story.
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