Portugal Turns On EU Entry/Exit System, Bringing Biometric Borders

Portugal’s border posts quietly flipped a switch this morning, ushering in an EU-wide Entry/Exit System (EES) that promises tighter control of who comes and goes through the Schengen Area. For residents, the most immediate consequence will be felt by visiting friends, family members or business partners who do not hold an EU passport: their next arrival or departure will require biometric registration, slightly longer queues and a brand-new set of automated kiosks.

What will travellers notice first?

Even seasoned globetrotters will be asked to pause at the biometric kiosks now installed at Lisbon, Porto and Faro airports. Cameras capture a high-resolution facial image, scanners read four fingerprints and the machine cross-checks the data against the passenger’s electronic passport. The system, introduced under EU Regulation 2017/2226, replaces the manual stamp that border guards used to slap on a travel document. Holiday-makers from Brazil or the United Kingdom, for instance, will see a digital record of each entry and exit stored for up to 3 years — 5 years if they overstay the legal 90-day limit in any 180-day period.

How Portugal prepared the ground

The Ministry of Internal Administration spent the past 18 months retrofitting departure halls with 60 multimodal gates in Lisbon, 32 in Porto and 20 in Faro. Additional units have been delivered to the land crossings of Vilar Formoso and Caia on the Spanish frontier. Engineers from Vision-Box, the Portuguese company that also supplies Heathrow, carried out most of the installation work. Officials estimate €42 M in equipment costs and €8 M annually for data storage and maintenance, partly reimbursed by the EU Internal Security Fund. Staff rosters at Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (SEF) have been adjusted to deploy extra officers during the morning transatlantic bank in Lisbon, the period that typically generates the heaviest arrival traffic.

The numbers behind the decision

Brussels argues the switch is overdue. In 2023 alone, Schengen states recorded 97 000 visa overstays, an 18 % rise in 4 years. Portuguese airports accounted for nearly 7 % of that total. By automating calculations of ‘days left’ in the Schengen clock, the Commission hopes to cut administrative workload and improve deportation case accuracy. The new database will also feed information to Frontex risk-analysis units in Warsaw, allowing real-time alerts if a passport linked to crime or terrorism is scanned at any external border.

Civil-liberties storm clouds

Despite strong political consensus in Brussels, privacy watchdogs here in Portugal are sceptical. The NGO D3 – Defesa dos Direitos Digitais warns that mass collection of fingerprints could be disproportionate, especially because travellers have no opt-out once the system is live. A joint letter sent to the Portuguese Data Protection Authority (CNPD) points out that facial recognition errors still disproportionately affect people with darker skin tones. CNPD officials told Público newspaper they will audit the infrastructure within 6 months to verify encryption standards and the legal basis for data transfers to law-enforcement agencies outside the EU.

Potential pain points in the first weeks

Airlines have already been briefed to expect longer queues until passengers become familiar with the hardware. Trial runs at Lisbon in September indicated processing times of around 2 minutes for a first-time enrolment and 40 seconds on subsequent trips. During peak summer weekends, that could translate into an extra half-hour wait unless all kiosks remain operational. SEF insists contingency plans are in place: manual counters can reopen quickly and personnel have been trained to ‘triage’ families with small children, travellers with reduced mobility and crew members.

Looking beyond the start-up hiccups

The EES is only one piece of a broader technological puzzle. By late 2026, Portugal must also connect its border posts to the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS), a €7 fee pre-clearance program similar to the US ESTA. Analysts believe the combination of EES and ETIAS will eventually reduce illegal migration pressure on the Iberian Peninsula, but they caution that predictive algorithms are no substitute for robust human rights safeguards. For now, the advice to anyone expecting non-EU guests is simple: tell them to arrive early, keep their fingers ready for scanning and, above all, make sure their 90-day clock does not run out.