Digital border checks cause long Schiphol queues

Waiting times at Schiphol’s passport desks climbed past 110 minutes in early September, and internal airport documents describe the situation at border control as critical on an almost daily basis.

The cause is the EU’s new Entry/Exit System, the digital border check that has been mandatory across Europe since April 2026.

The system was meant to replace passport stamps with a scan of face, fingerprints and passport at one of Schiphol’s 161 kiosks. In practice the kiosks fail often, the recognition software crashes, and many passports cannot be read at all.

Checks then fall back to staffed desks, where the queues spill over to EU travellers who have nothing to do with the new registration. On one September Wednesday the kiosks were unavailable to British passengers for the entire day.

The consequences reach beyond the terminal. Passengers miss flights, departures are delayed, and airlines carry the cost of rebooking and hotel rooms.

The industry association Barin calls the waits unacceptable and wants Brussels, The Hague and Schiphol to move faster; KLM is pressing for stabler systems and more capacity at the border.

Relief is not close. The responsible minister told parliament in September 2026 that stabilising the system will take several more months, and Brussels has extended the Netherlands’ permission to bypass the kiosks until the end of the year.

Schiphol’s own planning expects near-daily critical alerts at the border until the end of October. For the weeks after that, the internal forecast holds no prediction at all.

Source: Het Parool