In a fresh sign that Brussels is listening to industry concerns, the European Commission has formally given Italy, Finland and 20-plus other Schengen members the power to deactivate the Entry/Exit System (EES) on short notice. The policy, published on 4 February, allows any participating country to pause biometric checks for up to three months and then extend the pause for another two, provided the goal is to ease passenger congestion.
The announcement follows a week of headlines about seven-hour lines in Lisbon and missed connections at Frankfurt and Heathrow’s juxtaposed controls. Finland’s flagship Helsinki-Vantaa hub has fared better than most—thanks to extensive testing with Japan Airlines, Finnair and Qatar Airways—but still recorded a 65 percent increase in non-EU processing time on its busiest January day.
Finland’s Border Guard welcomed the contingency clause, noting that it gives managers the “operational discretion” to balance security with flow management. For travellers, the biggest immediate impact is predictability: if queuing times spike above 45 minutes, Finland can simply revert to manual stamping and redeploy personnel rather than watch lines snake into duty-free.
![Finland Among Schengen States Cleared to ‘Switch Off’ EES During Peak Travel—What Employers Need to Know]()
Travellers and mobility managers trying to stay ahead of these shifting rules can tap VisaHQ’s Finland portal for real-time updates on EES pauses, ETIAS rollout milestones and visa options, plus end-to-end application support; see https://www.visahq.com/finland/ for details.
Corporate travel departments should update risk assessments and ensure that relocation packages include extra airport time until at least October 2026, when Brussels hopes the EES roll-out will have stabilised. Employers bringing non-EU talent into Finland should also remember that, even when the system is paused, the €20 ETIAS travel authorisation—now confirmed for late-2026 launch—will still apply to many short-term visitors.
Looking ahead, Finland plans to install 70 additional self-service kiosks and to launch a multilingual pre-enrolment app that allows biometric capture before arrival. If successful, the app could cut first-entry processing to under five minutes—good news for Nordic hubs competing to be the fastest connection point between Europe and Asia.
The announcement follows a week of headlines about seven-hour lines in Lisbon and missed connections at Frankfurt and Heathrow’s juxtaposed controls. Finland’s flagship Helsinki-Vantaa hub has fared better than most—thanks to extensive testing with Japan Airlines, Finnair and Qatar Airways—but still recorded a 65 percent increase in non-EU processing time on its busiest January day.
Finland’s Border Guard welcomed the contingency clause, noting that it gives managers the “operational discretion” to balance security with flow management. For travellers, the biggest immediate impact is predictability: if queuing times spike above 45 minutes, Finland can simply revert to manual stamping and redeploy personnel rather than watch lines snake into duty-free.
Travellers and mobility managers trying to stay ahead of these shifting rules can tap VisaHQ’s Finland portal for real-time updates on EES pauses, ETIAS rollout milestones and visa options, plus end-to-end application support; see https://www.visahq.com/finland/ for details.
Corporate travel departments should update risk assessments and ensure that relocation packages include extra airport time until at least October 2026, when Brussels hopes the EES roll-out will have stabilised. Employers bringing non-EU talent into Finland should also remember that, even when the system is paused, the €20 ETIAS travel authorisation—now confirmed for late-2026 launch—will still apply to many short-term visitors.
Looking ahead, Finland plans to install 70 additional self-service kiosks and to launch a multilingual pre-enrolment app that allows biometric capture before arrival. If successful, the app could cut first-entry processing to under five minutes—good news for Nordic hubs competing to be the fastest connection point between Europe and Asia.
