German opposition lawmakers intensified their criticism of the European Union’s new Entry/Exit System (EES) on 24 April 2026, warning that the biometric border-control database is already creating multi-hour queues at Frankfurt, Munich and Düsseldorf and could become a permanent drag on business travel. Speaking in Berlin, Left-Party interior-affairs spokeswoman Clara Buenger said the mandatory fingerprint and facial-image capture for every non-EU traveller turns “law-abiding holiday-makers and executives alike into suspects” and risks years-long retention of highly sensitive data. The EES, fully activated on 10 April across all Schengen external borders, automatically calculates each visitor’s remaining days under the “90-in-180” stay rule and replaces manual passport stamps. EU officials argue the system will deter overstays and detect identity fraud, but the first fortnight has been rocky: Frankfurt Airport reports an average processing time of 3.5 minutes per third-country passenger—triple the pre-EES average—while several IT outages forced manual fallback procedures at Cologne/Bonn and Hamburg last weekend.
![German Left Party brands new EU Entry/Exit System a “surveillance trap” as airport delays mount]()
Travellers looking to avoid unpleasant surprises at the border can turn to VisaHQ, which continuously tracks rule changes and processing times for German ports of entry. The company’s online portal (https://www.visahq.com/germany/) summarizes the latest EES requirements, offers document-check services, and can pre-screen applicants for potential 90-day overstays—giving both holiday-makers and corporate mobility teams a practical head start before they reach the kiosk.
German travel-management companies are lobbying the Interior Ministry for contingency measures ahead of the summer peak. “If queues exceed 60 minutes, the police should be able to switch the kiosks to ‘registration-lite’ mode and wave through connecting passengers,” said VDR (German Business Travel Association) president Christoph Carnier. Airlines meanwhile warn of missed connections: Lufthansa says 7 percent of long-haul transfer passengers in the first ten days of EES missed onward flights at Frankfurt, triggering EU-mandated compensation and hotel costs. Data-protection experts also question the legal basis for storing biometrics for three years (or five in the case of overstayers). The Federal Data Protection Commissioner told the Bundestag’s digital-affairs committee that the regulation “pushes the boundaries of proportionality” and called for an independent audit of algorithmic bias after trials showed higher false-reject rates for travellers with darker skin tones. For mobility managers, the immediate advice is practical: allow at least an extra hour for outbound flights, brief travellers on the need to remove masks for the facial scan, and, where possible, route urgent same-day trips through intra-Schengen hubs such as Vienna or Copenhagen that are reporting shorter waits. Long-term, companies may need to update GDPR compliance registers to reflect the fact that employees’ biometric templates are now processed by an EU-wide law-enforcement system each time they cross the external border.
Travellers looking to avoid unpleasant surprises at the border can turn to VisaHQ, which continuously tracks rule changes and processing times for German ports of entry. The company’s online portal (https://www.visahq.com/germany/) summarizes the latest EES requirements, offers document-check services, and can pre-screen applicants for potential 90-day overstays—giving both holiday-makers and corporate mobility teams a practical head start before they reach the kiosk.
German travel-management companies are lobbying the Interior Ministry for contingency measures ahead of the summer peak. “If queues exceed 60 minutes, the police should be able to switch the kiosks to ‘registration-lite’ mode and wave through connecting passengers,” said VDR (German Business Travel Association) president Christoph Carnier. Airlines meanwhile warn of missed connections: Lufthansa says 7 percent of long-haul transfer passengers in the first ten days of EES missed onward flights at Frankfurt, triggering EU-mandated compensation and hotel costs. Data-protection experts also question the legal basis for storing biometrics for three years (or five in the case of overstayers). The Federal Data Protection Commissioner told the Bundestag’s digital-affairs committee that the regulation “pushes the boundaries of proportionality” and called for an independent audit of algorithmic bias after trials showed higher false-reject rates for travellers with darker skin tones. For mobility managers, the immediate advice is practical: allow at least an extra hour for outbound flights, brief travellers on the need to remove masks for the facial scan, and, where possible, route urgent same-day trips through intra-Schengen hubs such as Vienna or Copenhagen that are reporting shorter waits. Long-term, companies may need to update GDPR compliance registers to reflect the fact that employees’ biometric templates are now processed by an EU-wide law-enforcement system each time they cross the external border.
