EES and Portugal’s Borders: No Queue Series, Waits From 30 Minutes to Six Hours and an ETIAS With No Date

Ten months of rollout, in dates

The EES replaces passport stamping for non-EU visitors with a digital record of entry, exit, fingerprints and a face image. It started progressively on 12 October 2025 and became fully operational on 10 April 2026 (European Commission). Regulation (EU) 2025/1534, adopted in July 2025, let member states phase in biometrics and suspend them at crossings that were overwhelmed. Press summaries put the end of those suspension powers at 6 September 2026. We did not retrieve the regulation text, and sources disagree between 6 and 7 September.

Lisbon in December: a stress test

The Commission’s unannounced evaluation of Lisbon on 15 to 17 December 2025 reached the press through DN, which reported serious deficiencies, among them procedures simplified without notifying Brussels and no exit checks at Lisbon. A later report counted 14 critical failures covering staffing, equipment and police checks, with an action plan due on 30 April (Observador, 23 April). The Interior Minister, Maria Lúcia Amaral, told Parliament on 16 December that Lisbon had 236 officers against 270 required, a shortfall of 34 (derived). She said waits averaged three hours with a maximum of six, and that the targets of 30 minutes on departures and 40 on arrivals were being missed.

On 30 December the government announced a three-month suspension of the EES software at Lisbon and sent 24 Republican Guard (GNR) soldiers to the arrivals hall. The suspension did not run for three months. The Interior Ministry said in March that the system had resumed gradually from the start of the year, and DN placed the resumption in mid-January. Observador reported on 6 January that Brussels had asked Portugal for information and regarded the decision as unrelated to EES problems, while the government cited restructuring works. The same decision therefore has three stated explanations, which are congestion, building works and a power in the EU regulations, and no document we could read settles which applied. In April the new Interior Minister, Luís Neves, said the biometric kiosks had an error rate of about 30% and were being replaced. That figure is a ministerial statement, not a measured data set.

Lisbon’s border hall is a third constraint on an airport that already runs at its ceiling. Our Lisbon airport capacity article covers slots and punctuality, and our new airport tracker covers the Luís de Camões project. Exposure at the border is large and growing. PSP data reported by RTP on 19 December 2025 show non-Schengen passengers at Lisbon rising from 2.3 million in 2021 (19% of 12.1 million) to 9.7 million in 2023 and 10.6 million in 2024. The 2025 figure of about 12 million is an estimate. Against Lisbon’s 36.1 million passengers that is about a third (derived).

The summer of maxima

The PSP’s habit is to publish the longest wait of a morning. On 17 May 2026 its communiqué gave 130 minutes at Porto, 110 at Lisbon and 100 at Faro between 09:00 and 12:00. Lusa’s summary of the same day said Porto passed two hours and Lisbon and Faro were near an hour and a half, and we use the PSP’s numbers. A report dated 18 May put the Lisbon arrivals peak at 140 minutes, with 75 at Porto and 40 at Faro, and does not say which day it describes.

Then on 19 May the PSP gave averages: 36 minutes on Lisbon arrivals and 32 on departures, 40 and 45 at Faro, 30 and 10 at Porto. It said waits were below one hour and that reports of six-hour delays were false. The statement covers averages for a late morning, a different measure on a different day from the 17 May maxima and from the minister’s December figures, and the releases do not say so. A reader sees 140, 110 and 36 minutes for the same airport within three days and cannot tell a bad hour from a typical one.

The pattern continued. On 31 May, to 15:00, the PSP reported maximum arrivals waits of 32 minutes at Lisbon, 55 at Porto and 30 at Faro, for 51,980 passengers checked at the three airports. On 12 June, to 11:00, the maxima were 65 at Lisbon, 11 at Porto and 70 at Faro, for 31,527 passengers. Porto and Faro changed places in twelve days, which shows how little a single morning tells.

The PSP’s releases cover the three big airports. Funchal and the Azores were listed as not reported in the 12 June release, although the PSP counts 115 officers in Madeira and 124 in the Azores. UK nights in Madeira fell 8.8% in the second quarter, so the absence of island wait data is more than a footnote. No source we found says whether queues were a factor.

After 12 June the record thins. On 31 July the PSP said Porto’s morning wait was above its reference parameters and gave no minutes. The PSP told Lusa in mid-September that typical waits at Lisbon under full biometric capture were 15 to 30 minutes, against 5 to 15 before, and that Faro was under the most pressure, with more than ten flights landing within 25 minutes on 10 September. The PSP has never published its reference time. It said on 12 April that biometric capture is suspended automatically when waits pass it.

The operational data exist. The EES logs every crossing, and the Commission counted about 66 million entries and exits and more than 32,000 refusals of entry by 21 May, with no split by country. The PSP publishes totals for its border work. It reported 21,105,180 passengers checked in 2025, with 343 detentions (RTP, 23 January 2026), and a provisional 6,295,550 checked from January to April 2026, with 980 refusals (DN, 18 May). A figure for 21 August 2025 to 20 August 2026 of 19,749,328 checked is lower than the calendar year 2025, which probably reflects a different definition. Nobody has released an average wait by airport and day.

Staff, gates and money

The PSP promised 360 of 570 newly trained agents to the airports from July: 150 for Lisbon, 90 for Porto, 70 for Faro, 30 for the Azores and 20 for Madeira (PSP via Lusa, 28 May). Neves gave 340 on 5 June, with 140 for Lisbon and 100 for Porto. By 3 July the PSP counted 367 in place: 170 at Lisbon, 78 at Porto, 69 at Faro, 29 in Madeira and 21 in the Azores (Barlavento/Lusa). Lisbon received more than planned and Porto fewer. By 13 September the PSP counted 1,504 border officers at the airports, which it put at about 80% of the recommended number. That implies a recommended force near 1,880 (derived).

On 29 December 2025 the Council of Ministers authorised the PSP to spend up to €7.5 million over 2026 to 2028 on e-gate hardware, software and maintenance at Lisbon. Observador reported it as about €7.4 million plus VAT, a direct award under imperative urgency, with no supplier named. On 4 June the Commission announced about 25 officers and €7 million to €8 million of support, mostly for infrastructure. We could not find which EU fund pays for it, any ANA spending figure for the border hall, or the kiosk contract. The PSP said in November 2025 that 48 Frontex officers would arrive in 2026.

The booth count is the least settled number in the story. In December the minister gave 16 arrival booths. For the 29 May expansion, Lusa and DN reported 34 manual arrival booths, up 14, and 31 or 32 arrival e-gates, with departures at 18 booths and 18 e-gates. The ANA chief executive, Thierry Ligonniere, gave the same booth and gate counts on 22 May. ECO’s report of 3 June had manual arrival booths rising only from 16 to 20, with e-gates reaching 28 on 19 June and 32 by the end of July. These sources cannot all be right, and we treat none of them as settled. Our Faro airport article covers the Algarve gateway. No booth or gate count has been published for Faro or Porto.

Who is exposed, and what the nights show

Eurostat counts nights by country of residence, not nationality, so the exposed share is an upper bound. Visitors resident in the UK spent 10.37 million nights in 2025, those in the US 5.48 million, Brazil 2.44 million and Canada 1.84 million. Together that is 20.1 million nights, 33.5% of foreign nights and 22.5% of all nights (derived). Norway and Iceland add little and sit outside EES. Each of the larger markets has its own article, including our pieces on UK and American visitors.

INE’s monthly flashes, as reported by ECO and Observador, show no pattern that EES would explain. Non-resident nights fell 0.6% in June 2026, the first fall in eight months, yet UK nights rose 1.8% and US nights 2.8% that month. Germany fell 4.9% and France 7.9%, and neither is subject to EES. In July non-resident nights rose 0.7%, with the UK up 3% and the US down 3.1%. In August they rose 1.9%, with the UK up 3.4% and Canada up 11.2%. In Madeira, UK nights fell 8.8% in the second quarter, and no source gives a cause. None of these reports attributes a change to EES.

Surveys point in different directions because they ask different questions. The ABTA Holiday Habits survey, reported on 14 October, found that 6% of respondents said EES had made them significantly less likely to visit EU destinations. Of the 46% of Europe-bound travellers who had used the system, half waited under 30 minutes and 87% under an hour. It covers Europe, not Portugal. The World Travel & Tourism Council said on 9 June that 41 million arrivals and US$45.4 billion across Schengen would be at risk if waits reached three hours, which is a scenario applied to 2026 forecasts and not a measured loss. Airlines for Europe’s €1 billion of summer delay costs, reported on 8 October, was attributed mainly to airspace and capacity and cannot be cited as an EES cost. The hotel association AHP said on 28 May that it had seen no declared booking drops but more volatility.

The flexibility that ended on 6 September

Portugal used the safety valve in at least one documented episode. The PSP suspended biometric capture on departures at Lisbon, Porto and Faro on 11 and 12 April, and said suspensions would be automatic whenever waits passed an unpublished reference time. The Commission’s position, stated on 29 May, was that partial suspension at specific crossings was allowed until September, with the digital record continuing and Portugal obliged to notify it. How many hours or days Portugal used is not published.

On 7 July Neves joined counterparts from Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands and Switzerland in asking the Commissioner, Magnus Brunner, to extend the mechanism, calling its end on 6 September a source of serious concern (Jornal Económico/Lusa). Spain did not sign. On 27 August the Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, said biometrics would be 100% from 6 September. He called the trend very positive and said not every constraint was resolved. What followed is contested. Biometric Update reported on 14 September that the Commission had informally allowed nine states to delay full checks without a new deadline. ECO wrote on 13 September of a delay to December for technical problems. One aggregator says no extension was adopted. The Commission said on 1 September that the system had broadly worked well over the summer. We found no primary text of any decision.

Lisbon is not alone in the data problem. ACI Europe’s survey, reported on 27 May, found peak waits up to 3.5 hours across 45 airports in 20 countries, against 2 hours earlier. Sensor data relayed by Executive Digest from a Financial Times analysis put average July waits at Frankfurt at 120 minutes against 60 a year earlier, and at Munich at 60 against 31. Schiphol said non-EU arrivals waited one to two hours on average. Spain’s police run EES without published waits. These are airport-operator or third-party numbers, and none is comparable with the PSP’s maxima.

What a usable queue statistic would look like

The fix is cheap and the PSP already holds the inputs. A usable statistic would give, for each airport and direction, the average wait and the 90th percentile by hour, published weekly with the number of booths, e-gates and kiosks open. It would say how many hours biometric capture was suspended and why. The Commission said on 10 April that biometrics may be suspended when waits are excessive, which makes the threshold the single most important unpublished number. Until it is released, a journalist can only compare press releases that choose different windows, and a hotelier cannot tell whether the 140 minutes reported on 18 May was a peak hour or a normal morning.

ETIAS: from the last quarter of 2026 to no date

ETIAS is the separate pre-travel authorisation that visa-exempt visitors will need before flying to the Schengen area. Until mid-July 2026 the official ETIAS website said it would start in the last quarter of 2026. Intermediaries (iVisa on 20 July, Newland Chase on 9 September) report that the sentence was replaced with a statement that ETIAS is not in operation and no applications are collected. ABTA said on 13 October that there is now no official launch date. We could not open the portal ourselves, so the change rests on those reports. Our airports traffic article stated the older target as official, and the correction is in the panel below.

The legal basis is Regulation (EU) 2018/1240. Its published text sets the fee at €7, while gov.uk and the press cite €20, which would come from a later Commission act that we could not retrieve. Residence-permit holders and long-stay visa holders are outside the scope, and UK, US, Canadian and Brazilian visitors are inside it. Press accounts say the Commission will fix the start date only after the EU agency eu-LISA signs off the system, will give several months’ notice, and will allow a transitional period of at least six months in which travellers without authorisation are not turned away. On the six-month rule alone, the wait after full EES operation on 10 April ended on 10 October (derived). Readiness, notice and the transition all remain, and we found nothing that suggests a mandatory requirement in 2026. The next checkpoint is the eu-LISA management board on 17 to 19 November. No source we read names the Portuguese ETIAS national unit. The PSP’s UNEF is the likely candidate and is not confirmed.

What this means for travellers, businesses and analysts

Travellers from the UK, US, Canada and Brazil register once, free of charge, with fingerprints and a photo, and the record lasts three years. The 90 days in any 180 rule still applies. The PSP’s typical figure for Lisbon in September was 15 to 30 minutes, but the maxima in May and June ran to 140 minutes at Lisbon and 130 at Porto, so leave a margin before onward transfers and domestic connections, above all for morning arrivals when several long-haul flights land together. Faro had the heaviest pressure in September. Press reports say cruise passengers whose voyage starts and ends outside Schengen are usually exempt on day trips, and we found nothing Portugal-specific on that. Our Lisbon travel guide covers arrival logistics.

Tourism businesses and investors should read the border as a capacity ceiling beside the runway one. Officers per million passengers are almost identical at the three airports, between 19 and 21 (derived), while exposure differs: about a third of Lisbon’s passengers are outside Schengen and a press claim puts Faro above half. A hotel or tour operator selling to UK and US guests carries the risk of a late first day. The nights data show no booking loss from EES so far. The thresholds that would change that view are a PSP series with arrivals averages above 40 minutes, a Commission refusal to extend suspension powers through winter, and an ETIAS start date. A fall in UK or US nights that Germany and France do not share would be the first evidence of lost demand.

Journalists and analysts can cite Eurostat’s 2025 nights for the four exposed markets, the PSP’s dated communiqués for 17 May (130, 110 and 100 minutes), 31 May and 12 June, the €7.5 million authorised on 29 December 2025, the PSP’s 360 planned and 367 delivered officers, and the minister’s December average and maximum, attributed to her. They should not repeat the 6h40, 7-hour and 8-hour Lisbon figures, which have no named measurer, the Commission as the source of a seven-hour wait, the “ETIAS in the last quarter of 2026” target, or any cost of EES to Portuguese tourism, which nobody has calculated. The finding this article adds to the series is that a border system that logs every crossing still has no published wait series. The count exists in the system, and Portugal has not released it.