The European Union has refused to ease its new border checks, even though it admits that 20 border crossings have seen serious queues since fingerprint and facial-scan checks replaced the passport stamp.
On 1 July, Europe’s main airport and airline bodies wrote to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. They told her the situation had reached a critical point. Nine EU member states made a similar request.
Every arriving traveller now hands over four fingerprints and a photo to a register that logs each entry and exit. The rollout began in October 2025. It was declared complete on 10 April this year.
The delay comes from enrolment. Every traveller has to be registered individually the first time they arrive. Most travellers have not yet gone through that first crossing. Technical faults have made this worse, arriving just as the busiest travel season began.
The trouble has now spread to a second system: an online permit that travellers must buy before departure. According to media reports, the agency building it says a launch this year is no longer realistic, though the official website has not yet been updated to reflect this. The permit was first promised in 2021. Its fee has since risen from €7 to €20.
South African travellers should note one key distinction. The permit only applies to visitors who do not need a visa for Europe. South Africans need a Schengen visa. The permit will never apply to them, despite local reports suggesting otherwise.
The fingerprinting applies to everyone, visa or not. Every South African arriving in Europe will be enrolled in it, and will queue for it.
There is one way to shorten that queue. An app called Travel to Europe lets any traveller who needs to enrol, visa holder or not, submit their passport details and facial image up to 72 hours before reaching the border. Use is optional, and it currently only works at borders that have switched it on. Sweden was the first.
For a South African, that means one less queue at the airport itself, but only if the country being entered happens to support it.
The border checks causing the queues are formally called the Entry/Exit System. The delayed permit that will never apply to South Africans is called the European Travel Information and Authorisation System. Neither name explains what a traveller actually experiences: one is a wait that’s here now, the other is a wait for something that keeps not arriving.