EES NY Times Article

Additional discussion about this:
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/call-for-temporary-suspension-of-ees-at-some-airports

It is what it is. Growing pains. This is as bad as it will ever be. As has been reported here countless times, the experience is all over the map. In May, I arrived in Lisbon, and the automated system did not work. I was directed to join the manual checkpoint and passed through in less than 10 minutes.

I agree with Alomaker...it's coming along. I've been traveling through Rome quite a bit lately and the signage is improved every time. There are more staff people directing travellers to the right line, and all the immigration agents seem better trained about who belongs where and what to do with edge cases, such as those of us who have passports that require EES, but legal residency in Europe which requires us to bypass EES. Early on, we were shuffled pillar to post but now the signage very clearly says "EU Citizens and Legal Residents", which keeps us from clogging up your lines!

There are some crazy statistics floating around about how many overstaying tourists and illegal visitors they have already found even with the system rollout challenges. So I don't believe the system will be abandoned, but it will continue to be fine-tuned. And airports can turn it off during especially busy periods at their discretion.

I seem to recall several years ago even, people would ask "How long will it take to get through immigration (or customs) at airport X?"

The honest answer was that it might take 10 minutes, it might take two hours. Your time was dependent on how many planes landed in your time slot, where you were sitting on the plane, how many officers were working, etc. The answer now, with EES, is the same, but it is the fault of EES.

Went through initial EES in Bologna earlier this year and it probably added 15 or 20 minutes to the process. We were shunted into a side room and there were 20 or so machines and 5 or 6 people helping everyone out with the process. Most people were able to get through the process without any help so there was help if you needed it. After you went through ESS and then our passports were marked and then we were sent back through the rest of the usual process of the entry and the stamp.

All in all it wasn't that big a deal but if you are the least of 5 planes that came in I can see it adding a bunch of time. Now that I'm enrolled I assume I'll be able to skip the enrollment step next time and go straight to the electronic check in and eventually I won't even get stamped just green lighted by the machine.

Don't forget that you will need to go through ESS out of the country now as well, which is the whole point of the process in tracking all your days. They've added this step at the airport passport check out passing into the international terminal. I added about 2 minutes to the passport check time, but mostly because you need to each go through the photo recognition process individually rather than approach the counter as a couple like they used to do if you're together.

Your mileage may vary but as everyone is pointing out - the sign up process is only once and this is the bumpy roll out part of the process. Once most people are signed up you'll be able to head to the passport control line just like you used to.

Happy travels,
=Tod

Dumb question - if you are fying from the US to Europe and connecting in a Shengen country, do you go through EES at your connection or your final destination? And if it's your final destination, do you still go through the passport check in your connection airport?

EES at point of first entry has been my experience.

Passport control (whether it's EES or not) when first entering the Schengen Area and exit passport control (again, whether it's EES or not) when exiting the Schengen Area. You will go through Customs at your final destination (usually just walking through the Nothing To Declare door or hallway).

I had similar frustrations at FCO when leaving Italy a couple of weeks ago. Almost 2 hours spent just in the EES queue alone. Passport reader wouldn't scan my passport and kept saying "see officer", an agent tried it and got the same message. Spent another 20 minutes in a queue for an officer who took that entire time to process four people.

At least they are delaying the ETIAS rollout after this farce. But it looks like EES is here to stay. We can only hope that they can learn how to make it more efficient.