Airports and Airlines Say EES Is 'No Longer a Teething Problem': What Their Six Demands Mean for Drivers

Six months after the Entry/Exit System became fully operational, Europe's airports and airlines say the queues are not going away on their own. On 12 October 2026, ACI EUROPE and Airlines for Europe (A4E) jointly called on the European Commission and Member States to fix what they call structural problems, warning that “this is no longer a teething problem”. Their statement is about airports, not lorries. But two of their six demands go to the heart of how EES counts a UK driver's days — and both are worth understanding before the next busy season.

What the Airports and Airlines Asked For

The joint press release, issued in Brussels on 12 October, says waiting times at some airports have reached “up to five hours at peak traffic times” and are still routinely exceeding two hours. ACI EUROPE's Olivier Jankovec and A4E's Ourania Georgoutsakou say the disruption will not end unless the Commission and Member States fix structural issues, and set out six changes:

The release does not mention freight or land borders. For hauliers, the link is indirect but real: at the Channel ports, car and coach traffic shares the same approaches as lorries, and when tourist processing backs up, freight gets caught in it. The Road Haulage Association said in September that EES “is not ready” and has asked for professional drivers to be exempted from it.

Duplicate Profiles: Why This One Matters to Drivers

Every non-EU traveller should have one EES file. The EES Regulation is clear about what happens when someone returns: if they already have a file, it is updated — even if they are now travelling on a new passport. A new file is only supposed to be created when there is no previous registration. A duplicate profile, in other words, means the system did not recognise someone it had already registered.

The airports' statement does not explain how often this happens or why. But it does happen: the Dutch data protection authority's EES guidance specifically addresses travellers who are registered twice, and lists duplicated data as a reason to ask for a correction. For a lorry driver, the 90/180 count depends on EES matching every entry and exit to the same person. If those records end up in two places, the count the border guard sees may not be the true one.

Your Drivers' Rights Over Their EES Data

The EES Regulation gives every traveller the right to access their data and to have it corrected or deleted if it is wrong. A request can be sent to the competent authority of any Member State — the EU suggests the ones the traveller actually travelled to — and the authority must reply within 45 days. If the data was entered by another country, that country is brought in to check it. National data protection authorities can help, and the EU publishes a contact list for each country.

There is also an official EU tool for checking how long a traveller can stay. It answers with a simple “OK” or “NOT OK” for a planned trip, and it is not an entry decision. Note one important limit: the tool does not reflect any time spent in the Schengen Area before 10 April 2026, so it cannot give a complete answer for trips that span that date.

A Permanent Suspension Option Is Not a Break From 90/180

The temporary rules that let border posts partially suspend EES for up to six hours at a time expired on 6 September 2026. Nine Member States, IATA, Ryanair and ABTA all pressed for that flexibility to continue, and the Commission has said EES “broadly worked well” over the summer. The airports and airlines now want it made permanent.

If they get it, queues at peak times may ease. But a partial suspension switches off biometric registration, not the rules on how long a visitor can stay. A driver waved through a suspended check is still in the Schengen Area, still on the clock, and still limited to 90 days in any 180. That was true of every suspension so far, and it would be just as true of a permanent one.

What UK Hauliers Should Do

The Bottom Line

The airports and airlines are right that EES has problems, and some of their fixes would shorten queues for everyone, including at the ports. But the demand that matters most to a transport manager is the least glamorous one: one traveller, one record. Until EES gets that right every time, your own records are your drivers' best protection.

Whatever happens to the queues, the 90/180 count does not change. Know it better than the system does.