After Airport Queues, EU Pushes ETIAS Back to 2027

The European Union is postponing the launch of its electronic travel authorisation, ETIAS, until 2027, the Financial Times reported on 7 July 2026. The system for visa-free travellers had been scheduled to go live in the last quarter of 2026.

The newspaper attributed the delay to continuing problems with the biometric Entry/Exit System (EES), already in use at many European airports and blamed for hour-long queues. The official EU travel portal still lists a start in the final quarter of 2026.

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ETIAS — the European Travel Information and Authorisation System — is meant to become mandatory for travellers from visa-exempt countries who want to enter any of 30 European states. The authorisation must be requested online before travel. According to the EU, it is neither a residence permit nor a visa, but an extra security check. How the scheme is designed to work is set out in our ETIAS overview.

Queues of up to five hours

The postponement follows experience with EES, which was rolled out in stages from October 2025 and has been fully operational since April 2026. Instead of stamping passports, border officers digitally record fingerprints and facial images of non-EU citizens.

In an open letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen dated 1 July, ACI Europe, Airlines for Europe (A4E) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) warned that waiting times at borders had reached up to five hours. Passengers were missing connecting flights, aircraft were departing half empty, and staff were under severe pressure.

The associations asked the Commission to let member states fully suspend EES in July and August if the system became overloaded. By September, they said, a lasting rule should allow border authorities to switch it off in exceptional cases.

According to the groups, EU airports will handle about 40 million more passengers in the two summer months than in the two preceding months.

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Ryanair calls the system immature

Irish carrier Ryanair, quoted by the Guardian, also demanded a suspension until September in the worst-affected countries. Chief operating officer Neal McMahon said passengers should not be treated as "guinea pigs" for an "immature control system". Ryanair named seven airports with serious disruption: Tenerife South, Palma, Alicante and Málaga in Spain, plus Milan-Bergamo, Kraków and Paris-Beauvais.

Berlin Brandenburg Airport chief Aletta von Massenbach told the Guardian that non-EU citizens were waiting up to two hours there, and that the situation was not sustainable over the summer.

The European Commission, also cited by the Guardian, countered that checks take 70 seconds on average and that most airports have not reported major problems. Of an estimated 200 to 300 million border crossings a year, more than 100 million have already been recorded.

France, Italy and Greece still apply EES only in part. Under EU rules, member states are supposed to operate the system fully from September 2026. Until ETIAS itself opens, visa-exempt travellers do not need a pre-travel authorisation; when applications begin, they will be filed online.