The European Union’s new Entry/Exit System (EES) is undergoing its first true stress-test this weekend, and early indications are sobering. Travel portal The Traveler reports queues of up to six hours at airports in Spain, Portugal—and crucially for multinational employers—Italy, where Rome-Fiumicino and Milan-Malpensa handled their largest non-EU arrival waves since the system went fully live in April. EES replaces passport stamping with biometric registration (face and four-finger scans) for third-country nationals. While the technology worked during low-season trials, capacity limits are now evident. Italian border-police unions say passenger throughput at manual booths has dropped from 180 to 90 travellers per hour when first-time enrolments dominate.
![EES Bottlenecks: Six-Hour Queues Reported as Italy Faces First Peak Weekend of Biometric Border Checks]()
Amid these bottlenecks, VisaHQ’s dedicated Italy portal (https://www.visahq.com/italy/) can ease at least part of the travel burden by helping passengers verify visa requirements, pre-fill mandatory forms, and even arrange courier services for document submission before departure—streamlining the paperwork so that travellers spend less time at airport counters and more time on their actual itineraries.
Authorities have invoked an emergency clause allowing temporary suspension of full biometric capture if queues exceed 45 minutes, but staff availability constrains how often fallback measures can be used. For corporate mobility teams the operational impact is twofold. First, travellers connecting to domestic flights risk mis-connections if inbound processing overruns; some carriers are proactively waiving rebooking fees. Second, delayed exit checks mean that even EU-bound travellers leaving Italy can face lines because officers are busy ‘completing’ partial registrations from arrival peaks. Industry bodies such as IATA warn that unless member states accelerate kiosk roll-outs, summer traffic could overwhelm smaller Italian gateways like Venice (VCE) and Bari (BRI), which have fewer e-gates. The Ministry of the Interior has authorised overtime budgets for 200 temporary officers, but recruitment and training take weeks. In the interim, employers should advise staff to allow a minimum three-hour buffer between scheduled landing and onward rail/air connections. Longer term, experts predict the learning curve will flatten as more repeat visitors become registered; however, consultancy Steer Group estimates that systemic stability may take up to two years—a sobering horizon for travel managers planning global assignments through 2027.
Amid these bottlenecks, VisaHQ’s dedicated Italy portal (https://www.visahq.com/italy/) can ease at least part of the travel burden by helping passengers verify visa requirements, pre-fill mandatory forms, and even arrange courier services for document submission before departure—streamlining the paperwork so that travellers spend less time at airport counters and more time on their actual itineraries.
Authorities have invoked an emergency clause allowing temporary suspension of full biometric capture if queues exceed 45 minutes, but staff availability constrains how often fallback measures can be used. For corporate mobility teams the operational impact is twofold. First, travellers connecting to domestic flights risk mis-connections if inbound processing overruns; some carriers are proactively waiving rebooking fees. Second, delayed exit checks mean that even EU-bound travellers leaving Italy can face lines because officers are busy ‘completing’ partial registrations from arrival peaks. Industry bodies such as IATA warn that unless member states accelerate kiosk roll-outs, summer traffic could overwhelm smaller Italian gateways like Venice (VCE) and Bari (BRI), which have fewer e-gates. The Ministry of the Interior has authorised overtime budgets for 200 temporary officers, but recruitment and training take weeks. In the interim, employers should advise staff to allow a minimum three-hour buffer between scheduled landing and onward rail/air connections. Longer term, experts predict the learning curve will flatten as more repeat visitors become registered; however, consultancy Steer Group estimates that systemic stability may take up to two years—a sobering horizon for travel managers planning global assignments through 2027.
