Shoneez Sallie had been traveling for 23 hours from South Africa when she landed in Brussels, only to face a demoralizing sight that has become all too common for foreign travelers entering or leaving the European Union. There was a long, long line for passport control, barely moving.
Ms. Sallie, 39, said she stood in that line for five hours and 15 minutes. There were only six border security booths open, with officers in them processing roughly 1,000 people, she estimated. She waited so long that the rental company gave away the car she had reserved, and she had to pay about $740 more for another one.
“Some people were sitting on the floor and sort of scooting their bums up when the line moved,” she said. She posted a video on social media showing the dispirited crowd under the glaring lights of the Brussels entry hall.
It’s not just Brussels. In Lisbon, the lines peaked at six hours. In Amsterdam, KLM says its travelers are missing their flights at twice the usual rate during peak hours. Across Europe, travelers have been bemoaning delayed vacations and chaotic business travel.
All blame the same culprit: Europe’s new biometric border system, which aims to better track travelers — and keep out unauthorized visitors — by taking their fingerprints and facial scans. So far, it has succeeded at annoying them.
Both travelers and much of the travel industry are irate, with the Ryanair chief condemning the “bureaucratic stupidity” of the European Union.
Though E.U. officials have pointed a finger at pre-existing problems with airport staffing and logistics, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the bloc’s executive arm, has acknowledged “technical problems” in the new system. Recognizing the severity of the problem, the European Commission is considering extending a grace period that allows airports to temporarily stop collecting key biometric data in the case of long lines.
Reports of hourslong lines and missed connections continue to accumulate across Europe, blanketing social media and making for office chatter among travelers around the world.
“My family had warned me about how long these lines were, but they were so much worse than we expected,” said Mike Sofka, 39, who waited in line with his wife at Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris for about three hours before flying back to Chicago in early July.
The goal of the new system is simple: Europe wants to better track who travels into and out of its 29-country free-movement zone. Anyone visiting from the outside, including from the United States and Britain, must register.
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