What’s the point in this new EES?

[whatsthepointffs]

I get that the EU want to integrate their passport control process, cool.

I did it in February when it was first rolled out. Nice, according to the EU’s own information they now have my details for three years. Except I’ve turned up to Milan airport this morning and I’ve had to go through the physical passport control again as they won’t let anyone with a British passport use the e-gates

So in reality there’s no point to it at all! You go through it all every time, it’s just another layer of EU bureaucracy designed to make things more complicated. I have no doubt that some people have made a pretty penny off it though!

Just me who feels this way then 😂

Yep - that's Brexit for ya!

Enjoy (or not) every time you go through.

It’s just so silly. There should be two queues - EES registered and not. Simple.

I had that when I arrived in Oslo yesterday too. Fingerprints, photo & brief chat about what I was doing (and I had done the fingerprints etc already last year) . The queue moved quite quickly though.

Thankfully it’s so early here that it didn’t make a difference but it’s so frustrating! What’s the point

Give people a chance to reply! You posted at 330am UK time on a Monday morning on a site primarily used by people in the UK.

I agree, it's annoying.

It's to check and enforce the 90/180 day rule for non EU citizens.

Without EES, in theory the border guards were supposed to look through all the stamps in your passport, find all the ones from the last 6 months, match up the corresponding entry and exit stamps, which weren't always stamped clearly or next to each other but could be randomly distributed through your passport and determine whether you were at risk of breaching 90 days in the last 6 months so they should refuse entry.

I've only seen this happen once in a couple of dozen? trips I've made to the EU since Brexit and that was a surprise because obviously that's an impossible task for them to do. But in my experience it's worked fine most of the time without significant delays and several Spanish airports let UK passport holders use E gates.

The worst airport was a German one without E gates but that was awful pre-EES anyway. Poland and Denmark didn't have E gates either but most times I got straight through and the only minor delay (about 20 mins) was at a Polish airport when most people won't yet have registered on the system.

It youre registered you just go through the e gates next time.

Even if signs & staff are telling UK passport holders to go in the non-EU queue?

I'm confused by it too. We flew into Copenhagen recently and had to queue for an hour and a half for passport control. No electronic kiosks or e-gates working. There were just two queues - EU (which was super-quick) and non-EU. There were just two manned booths for non-EU so we were all waiting to go through those. The guy behind us in the queue spoke to a staff member about it. He said his whole family had already registered for EES on a previous trip so did they need to be in a different queue. The staff member said no, every non-EU person had to use the same queue but she didn't know why...

So the problem seemed to be: 1) No e-kiosks or e-gates in use and 2) No attempt to split the queue into registered and not registered

Wasn't the case in my post above

Its easier to check your days in the EU within a certain time frame, I’ve used the gates sometimes, although I have managed to cheat once and go through EU passports with my residency permit, so I might stick with that.

It seems to be country specific …we’ve used gates in some countries but not others.

The EU are concerned about immigration and want to keep records of how long people from other countries are in the EU.

there are concerns that for example people are coming into Spain via ferry from Africa and then moving to eg Germany and around the Schengen zone and not respecting the limit of how long they are allowed to stay.

it’s the EU equivalent of stop the boats. They fingerprint everyone in and out and then they know.

Yes but surely they should be able to use the e-gates to fingerprint everyone in and out and the passport scan to check the dates once registered rather than having to queue for the manned booths?

I agree entirely with you, OP, and asked exactly the same question when I'd done the scans and registration, the booth told me to go to e-gates but the staff wouldn't allow any non-EU passport holders to and instead had to wait in a 1 hour queue.

Don't get me wrong, if there were enough manned gates I'd be perfectly happy for a person to look as well as the scanny things. But when millions has been spent on the e-gates, I don't understand why they are not used to their full.

My husband has travelled within the EU about a dozen times since the new process was introduced and has had to stand in the longer queue every single time 🙃 The kids and I have EU passports so I'll usually take them through the shorter queue, take them to the toilet, find our suitcases and then wait a further 45 mins for my husband to join. It's bananas.

Gare du Nord is horrific for this. We turned up 80 minutes prior to our train (eurostar say 60!) and barely scraped getting it, and that was because it was delayed 10 minutes.

@Bjorkdidit

Without EES, in theory the border guards were supposed to look through all the stamps in your passport, find all the ones from the last 6 months, match up the corresponding entry and exit stamps, which weren't always stamped clearly or next to each other but could be randomly distributed through your passport and determine whether you were at risk of breaching 90 days in the last 6 months so they should refuse entry.

I can’t remember myself, but what passport check is done when leaving ? How are they counting the time in the Schengen area?

Also , I thought EES was needed on the way to the ‘proper’ system ETIAS - the self applied Visa type system like the USA has with their ETSA ( or is it ESTA ) ?

Presumably they're stopping the clock by recording that you've left the EU?

Yes

Yes! I was told when I entered the Schengen area I could use the e gates on departure, because it had recorded that I had done the EES before.

This morning I’m told nope, I try to explain that I’ve done it and the member of staff threatened to call the airport security on me!

Literally not possible if the staff threaten to call airport security on you for asking if you can 🙃

Lots of airports have been really struggling, the EU authorised them to suspend EES if the queues were long over the summer.

7th Sept is the last day for suspension after that (today) it has to be used no matter how long the queues.

i don’t know about e-gates - I’m disabled so can never use them.

It is silly. There should be two queues - Remain voters and Leave voters.

Just to say, the EU makes allowances for non EU spouses travelling together with someone with an EU passport. If you've got young kids and can't use the e-gates anyway, then you can just all go together in the same queue.