Portugal and Italy Refuse to Suspend Digital Border Checks for UK Travelers

Less than a month after the EU's Entry/Exit System became fully operational on April 10, 2026, three of the bloc's most tourism-dependent countries have abandoned biometric border checks for British travelers. Greece moved first, exempting UK passport holders from fingerprinting and facial scans on April 19. By May 3, Italy and Portugal had joined, unwilling to watch airport queues drive holidaymakers — and billions in revenue — toward their newly check-free competitor [1][2][3].

The suspensions expose a fundamental tension at the heart of the Schengen project: the EU designed a border system meant to apply uniformly to all third-country nationals, but individual member states retain the discretion — and the economic incentive — to opt out when enforcement proves too costly.

What the Entry/Exit System Actually Does

The EES replaces the manual passport stamp long used to track non-EU nationals entering and leaving the Schengen area. Instead of ink on paper, border officers capture a facial image and four fingerprints on first registration, linking them to the traveler's passport data in a centralized EU database managed by eu-LISA, the bloc's IT agency for justice and home affairs [4][5].

The system applies to all non-EU/non-Schengen citizens making short stays of up to 90 days within a 180-day period. This includes approximately 4.8 million UK visitors to Italy and over 2.35 million to Portugal annually [6][7]. Irish passport holders are exempt, as are UK nationals holding legal EU residency permits or Withdrawal Agreement documentation [8].

The EES was originally scheduled to launch in 2022, then pushed to 2023, then 2024, before finally entering a phased rollout on October 12, 2025. Full implementation across all 29 Schengen states began on April 10, 2026 [4][5].

The Rollout: "An Utter Fiasco"

The phased introduction between October 2025 and April 2026 provided early warning signs. During the 2025 holiday season, system crashes and extended processing times plagued airports across France, Spain, and Italy [9]. But the April 10 full launch — requiring all Schengen border posts to process every non-EU arrival through the new system — turned dysfunction into crisis.

At Lisbon's Humberto Delgado Airport, travelers reported waits of two and a half hours to clear non-EU passport control [10]. At Milan Linate, an EasyJet flight to Manchester departed with just 34 of its 156 booked passengers — the rest were still trapped in border queues [11]. Across Portugal's airports in Lisbon, Porto, and Faro, peak-period wait times climbed to between two and three hours [9].

Source: Airport operators / media reports

Data as of May 1, 2026CSV

Ryanair CEO Neal McMahon called the system "a half-baked IT system" being deployed during the busiest travel period, forcing passengers into "hours-long passport control queues" and causing some to miss flights entirely [12]. Travel agency consortium CEO Julia Lo Bue-Said stated that "until EES can be implemented without a detrimental effect on the traveler experience, there must be flexibility" [12].

The problems were not merely about volume. France had failed to adopt the EU's "Travel to Europe" app — a mobile tool allowing travelers to pre-register biometric data 72 hours before arrival — leaving only Portugal and Sweden as early adopters [12]. Self-service kiosks were insufficient for demand at French airports, and staff shortages compounded the bottleneck [12].

Greece Breaks Ranks

On April 19, Greece became the first member state to formally suspend biometric registration for UK nationals. The Greek Embassy in London confirmed that British passport holders were "completely exempt from biometric registration at all Greek border crossing points" [13].

The motivation was economic. British tourists inject approximately €3.5 billion into the Greek economy annually [3]. With queues at Greek airports stretching beyond an hour after April 10, the government calculated that the cost of enforcement exceeded the cost of defection from the EU-wide system [13].

The legal basis for the suspension comes from EU Regulation 2025/1534, which permits member states to partially suspend EES checks for up to 90 days following the full rollout date, with a possible 60-day extension [14]. Commission spokesperson Markus Lammert confirmed that this flexibility was built into the system's design [14].

Portugal and Italy Follow — Reluctantly

For two weeks after Greece's decision, Portugal and Italy maintained the system. But the competitive dynamics proved untenable.

As one travel industry expert quoted by LBC put it: "Countries are not going to sit back and let Greece take their trade because they won't face EES delays at airports" [3]. The economic stakes are significant: UK visitors spent an estimated €4.8 billion in Italy and €2.9 billion in Portugal in 2024 [6][7].

Source: ENIT / Turismo de Portugal / VisitGreece

Data as of Mar 1, 2025CSV

By early May, both countries shifted their positions. Portugal adopted what industry sources describe as an "informal policy of suspending biometric capture when queues exceed 15 minutes" [3][15]. Italy's Interior Ministry began drafting a decree authorizing border officers to revert to traditional passport stamps when wait times exceed 45 minutes, with the expectation that this would effectively mean no biometric checks during peak travel periods until September [3][15].

The announcements came on May 3, ahead of the UK's May half-term school holiday — a period that typically sees a surge of British family travel to Mediterranean destinations [2][3].

Who Is Still Enforcing — and Why

Not every member state has followed the Greek-led suspension. Spain, despite facing its own severe airport queues, has held firm [16]. France delayed EES implementation on Channel routes — the Dover-Calais ferries and the Eurotunnel — but has not suspended checks at its airports [12]. Croatia confirmed the system would remain in place throughout the tourist season [12].

Spain's silence is notable. As the single largest destination for British tourists — absorbing an estimated €8.2 billion in UK visitor spending in 2024 — it faces the strongest economic incentive to suspend. Yet as of early May, Spanish authorities have not announced any relaxation [16].

The holdout countries have not publicly articulated a Schengen-integrity argument, but the logic is implicit. The EES was designed as a uniform system for all third-country nationals. Suspending it selectively for UK travelers — the single largest group of non-EU visitors to southern Europe — creates a two-tier border that could face legal challenges from other third-country nationals and undermine the data-collection purpose of the system itself.

The European Commission's position has been carefully neutral. By building the 90-day suspension mechanism into the regulation, the Commission anticipated that not all member states would achieve seamless implementation simultaneously. But the Commission has not endorsed country-specific exemptions — the regulation permits temporary suspension of the system, not suspension for travelers of a particular nationality [14].

The UK Residency Question

British nationals with legal residency in an EU country — those holding a valid residence permit or long-stay visa, or beneficiaries of the Withdrawal Agreement — are formally exempt from EES registration [8][17].

In Portugal, approximately 48,000 UK citizens hold active residence permits as of 2025, making them the second-largest foreign nationality in the country after Brazilians [18]. In Italy, over 30,000 UK nationals are registered residents, according to British Embassy survey data [19].

These residents are supposed to pass through borders using their residence documentation, bypassing the EES entirely. In practice, however, the situation is less clear-cut. UK nationals who own property in an EU country but do not hold residency are fully subject to EES registration and the 90-day Schengen limit [17]. And during the chaotic April rollout, reports emerged of border officers unfamiliar with the distinction between residents and visitors, leading to Withdrawal Agreement beneficiaries being directed into EES queues [8].

The Cost Question

The financial burden of EES implementation is distributed across multiple levels. The central database infrastructure is managed and funded by eu-LISA, the EU's IT agency. But the hardware — biometric kiosks, cameras, upgraded border booths — and the personnel costs fall on individual member states and, in many cases, airport operators [20].

The European Commission acknowledged that it "probably underestimated the cost" of EES preparations for eu-LISA and member states, including investment in hiring and training staff, developing new procedures, and purchasing equipment [20]. Specific per-country cost figures have not been published, but smaller Schengen members have flagged resource constraints as a barrier to full implementation [20].

For airports, the costs are both direct (infrastructure) and indirect (lost retail revenue when passengers spend hours in queues rather than in duty-free shops, and reputational damage when airlines cancel flights due to boarding delays).

The UK-EU Reset and Border Diplomacy

The EES disruptions arrive at a politically awkward moment for UK-EU relations. At the May 2025 summit in London, the UK and EU agreed to a "Common Understanding" that included provisions for UK citizens to use automated e-gates once the EES became operational — a commitment that depended on individual member states facilitating access [21][22].

That commitment has not materialized uniformly. While the summit agreement envisioned smoother border crossings as part of the broader UK-EU "reset," the operational reality has been the opposite. The e-gate promise assumed a functioning system; instead, member states are reverting to manual stamps because the digital system cannot handle the volume [21].

The summit also established frameworks for cooperation on irregular migration, returns, and border security — areas where the UK and EU share strategic interests [22]. But the EES fiasco has not featured prominently in bilateral diplomacy, in part because it is framed as a technical implementation problem rather than a policy disagreement.

Who Gets Hurt

The operational failures of the EES rollout do not affect all travelers equally. First-time registrants face the longest processing times — the initial biometric capture takes significantly longer than subsequent checks, which theoretically require only a facial scan match [4]. This means the system's worst impacts are front-loaded during its first summer of operation.

Elderly travelers unfamiliar with biometric technology, families with young children facing extended waits, and frequent business travelers making multiple short trips face disproportionate disruption. Travelers on tight connections — particularly those transiting through Schengen hubs — risk missed onward flights [11].

No formal legal challenges to the EES have been filed in UK or EU courts arguing discriminatory treatment of British nationals specifically. The system applies to all non-EU/non-Schengen short-stay visitors, making a discrimination argument difficult to sustain on nationality grounds. However, civil society organizations have raised broader concerns about biometric data collection and the potential for racial profiling in enforcement [23].

Tourism Under Pressure

Both Portugal and Italy built record-breaking tourism sectors in the years before EES implementation. Portugal's international arrivals grew from 6.8 million in 2010 to 17.3 million in 2019 before the pandemic, and its tourism sector contributed €60.6 billion to the economy in 2024 — equivalent to 21.3% of national GDP [7][24].

Source: World Bank Open Data

Data as of Dec 31, 2020CSV

Italy received 95.4 million international visitors in 2019, with the UK accounting for 4.8 million visits and approximately 6.6% of total tourist flows [6][25].

Source: World Bank Open Data

Data as of Dec 31, 2020CSV

The UK market is not the largest for either country — Germany, France, and Spain send more tourists to both — but British visitors tend to stay longer and spend more per capita, particularly in the Algarve, the Amalfi Coast, and Tuscany [6][7]. Any sustained drop in UK arrivals would hit these regional economies hardest.

The full economic impact of the EES disruptions is not yet measurable — the system has been fully operational for less than a month. But the speed with which Greece, Italy, and Portugal moved to suspend enforcement suggests that early booking data or real-time arrival figures alarmed tourism officials.

What Comes Next

The suspensions are temporary — permitted for 90 days with a 60-day extension, potentially stretching into September or October 2026 [14]. The European Commission faces a difficult choice when these periods expire: enforce uniform implementation and risk a repeat of the April chaos, or extend flexibility and accept that the EES is functionally optional for the member states that generate the most tourism revenue from UK visitors.

The underlying technical problems — insufficient kiosk capacity, slow database integration, inadequate staff training, and low adoption of the pre-registration app — are solvable. But they require investment and time that the April deadline did not allow.

ETIAS, the European Travel Information and Authorization System that will require pre-travel authorization for visa-exempt third-country nationals, is scheduled to launch later in 2026 [5]. If the EES experience is any guide, that rollout may face similar pressure for delay or selective suspension.

For British travelers planning summer 2026 holidays, the practical picture is mixed. Greece, Italy, and Portugal will likely revert to simple passport stamps at most border crossings. Spain and France remain uncertain. And the 90/180-day Schengen rule continues to apply regardless of whether biometric data is captured — overstaying still risks future entry bans or fines [14].

The EES was conceived as a security and border-management tool, designed to track entries, exits, and overstays across the Schengen area. Its first real-world test has instead become a case study in the gap between EU-wide regulatory ambition and the operational capacity of individual member states to deliver on it.