New Entry System Leads To Longer Waits At Swiss Airports

Entry and exit into and out of the Schengen area is recorded by the new so-called Entry/Exit System (EES). All persons who do not have a passport from a European Union country, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein or Switzerland are checked.

The system was implemented gradually over a period of months and has been in force throughout the Schengen area since April 10. So far, 90 million people have been registered, as Magnus Brunner, EU Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration, told the media on Thursday in Luxembourg after a Schengen Council. That is around two million registrations per week.

Some 38,000 people had been refused entry, 1,000 of whom represented a security risk. According to the Austrian, the EES is“incredibly important” for the security of the EU.

As all of Switzerland's neighbouring countries are part of the Schengen area, the system is only used in Switzerland at airports and for flights coming from outside the Schengen area. This has been the case in Geneva since October 2025 and in Zurich since November 2025.

“In connection with EES, there have been and may continue to be longer waiting times at border control,” a spokeswoman for Zurich Airport told the Keystone-SDA news agency at the beginning of the week in response to an enquiry. The reason for this is that when third-country nationals without a valid residence permit in Switzerland or another Schengen state enter the country for the first time, a personal dossier is created in accordance with EU guidelines.

Personal details, travel document data and biometric data are recorded. The Zurich cantonal police are responsible for this at Zurich Airport.“The process is correspondingly time-consuming,” continues the airport spokesperson.

In general, the system is stable and reliable. In rare cases, however, there are waiting times of one and up to two hours. This is particularly the case when several flights from outside the Schengen area arrive together. It is assumed that the processes will continue to improve with increasing routine.

Due to the ski holidays, there were longer waiting times at Geneva Airport in January and February when there was a high volume of travellers.“On the most difficult day, the waiting time was two and a half hours,” said an airport spokesperson on enquiry. More than 70,000 passengers use the airport on such days.

In Geneva, unlike in Zurich, the Federal Office for Customs and Border Security (BAZG) is responsible for controls. In response to an enquiry, the BAZG stated that the EES is working well globally. However, the system has lengthened the inspection times, according to a spokeswoman for the BAZG. However, the processes are constantly being optimised.

Translated from German by AI/jdp

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at ....

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo certified by the Journalism Trust Initiati

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at ....