Travel Mayhem at French Airports: Why EES is Causing Hours of Delays (And Why ETIAS Isn’t to Blame, Yet)

Last updated on June 8th, 2026 at 08:24 pm

If you’ve flown into France recently, you’ll have no doubt experienced some annoyingly long delays. The reason isn’t ETIAS, despite what a lot of people are saying. ETIAS hasn’t actually launched yet. The real culprit is EES, the European Union’s new biometric Entry/Exit System, which completed its full rollout across France and the rest of the Schengen Area on 10 April 2026 after years of delays and false starts.

This matters because if you Google “ETIAS application” right now, you’ll find dozens of websites happy to charge you $60, $80, sometimes a lot more, for an authorization that doesn’t yet exist. Don’t fall for it. I’ll come back to that.

For Americans, who make up the largest single group of non-European visitors to France, the practical impact of EES is real. Each first-time entry now takes 1 to 2 minutes longer than the old passport stamp because fingerprints and a facial scan are being recorded. Multiply that across a 350-passenger A350 from Newark, and you’ve added an hour to the wait before anyone even reaches a kiosk.

I’ve spoken to friends who’ve waited 3 hours to get through arrivals at CDG since the new system kicked in. I flew back into Limoges from Stansted in May, and even with a Carte de Séjour and the airport being tiny in comparison, I still had a 90-minute wait.

What EES Actually Is, and Why France Rolled It Out in April

EES is the European Union’s new Entry/Exit System. The first time you enter the Schengen Area as a non-EU traveler, border officers record your fingerprints and take a facial scan. On every subsequent crossing within the next three years, the system uses those records to identify you instead of stamping your passport.

EES applies to every non-EU traveler entering the Schengen zone. That includes Americans, Brits, Canadians, Australians, and citizens of the 60-odd other countries with visa-free travel rights. The system was first announced back in 2016 and was originally supposed to launch in 2021. It got pushed back. Then pushed back again. After several more rounds of delays, EES began a phased rollout in October 2025 and reached full enforcement across all Schengen borders on 10 April 2026.

It replaces the old passport stamp. The idea is to track overstays more accurately and catch people flagged in European databases on entry. The actual effect, at least so far, has been long lines, biometric kiosks crashing at the worst possible moment, and a lot of confused travelers trying to figure out where to put their fingers while standing in the border queue.

Why French Airports Have Been the Worst Hit

France saw the biggest pile-up because it gets the most arrivals. Charles de Gaulle alone handled over 70 million passengers in 2024, and a chunk of those are Americans and Brits arriving for vacation.

When you add a new biometric check at every booth that hasn’t been properly tested, it’s mayhem. Why? Because each first-time entry under EES takes extra minutes to record fingerprints and a facial scan. Multiply that across a full long-haul flight, and you’ve added an hour to the wait before anyone even reaches a kiosk.

The automated PARAFE gates, which used to be the fast route for eligible passport holders, have been intermittently offline since April. Staff at CDG Terminal 2E have said the gates reboot every few hours.

Orly has fared a bit better, mostly because it handles fewer long-haul flights, but Nice, Lyon, and Marseille have all had their own versions of the same story. In late April, a software failure at CDG left passengers stuck on planes on the tarmac for over 2 hours because the arrivals hall was already at capacity.

The ground staff isn’t to blame. They’re working a system that was rolled out faster than the infrastructure could handle, and they’re the ones absorbing the frustration of travelers who’ve just flown 8 hours and are tired.

What About ETIAS? It’s Coming, But Not Yet

This is where most of the confusion has been. ETIAS, the European Travel Information and Authorisation System, is a separate thing from EES. Think of EES as the biometric check that happens when you arrive in Europe. ETIAS is the pre-travel authorization, similar to the American ESTA, that you’ll need to apply for online before you board your flight.

ETIAS has not launched. The European Commission has confirmed it will begin operations in the last quarter of 2026, which means October, November, or December. There will then be a 6-month grace period before strict enforcement begins, likely running through to mid-2027.

When ETIAS does launch, here’s what to expect:

• The fee will be €20, paid online by card. (The earlier €7 figure you might have seen quoted has been revised upward.)
• The application is meant to take about 10 minutes.
• Approval is usually granted within minutes, though it can take up to 30 days if you get flagged for further checks.
• Anyone over 70 or under 18 will be exempt from the fee, but still needs the authorization.
• The authorization will be valid for 3 years or until your passport expires, whichever comes first.
• It’s not a visa, and it won’t change the 90-day-in-180 rule that already applies to Americans in the Schengen zone.
• The only official site will be travel-europe.europa.eu/etias. Bookmark it for later.

Until ETIAS officially launches, you don’t need to do anything. Travel as usual. Show your passport, go through EES biometric registration on arrival, enjoy France.

The Scam Sites Are Already Out in Force

This is the part I really want you to read carefully.

Even though ETIAS isn’t open for applications, dozens of websites are already taking money from people who think they’re applying for it. Some charge $60 to $90. Others charge more. A few have official-looking URLs that mimic government domains. They’re all scams.

I’ve had readers email me after paying $80 to a third-party site that turned out to be a complete fake. One paid twice because she thought the first one hadn’t gone through. Another paid for “expedited ETIAS approval” months before any application portal existed.

If anyone, anywhere, tries to charge you for ETIAS right now, walk away. There is no legitimate way to apply as of today. When the real portal opens later this year, the URL will end in .europa.eu. Anything else is somebody making money off your confusion.

The Knock-On Effect: Missed Connections, Lost Bags, Ruined First Days

If you land at CDG with a connecting flight to Bordeaux, Toulouse, or Nice and you’re stuck in a 2-hour passport line, you’ll miss your connection. Air France has been rebooking passengers all spring, but the next flight to a regional airport might be the following morning. Hotels in Roissy have been booked out for weeks at a stretch.

Luggage has been another story. When passengers are delayed by hours, bags come off the belt and sit there, sometimes going missing or being moved.

The compensation rules under EU261 still apply, but getting through to a human at the airline call center has become an ordeal in itself.

If you’re connecting through CDG to anywhere else in France, give yourself a minimum of 4 hours between flights right now, not the 90 minutes the booking sites suggest. Better still, fly direct to a regional airport if you can, or fly into Amsterdam, Madrid, or Lisbon and connect onward from there. 

Schiphol and Madrid Barajas have handled the EES transition more smoothly, partly because they had a head start on the biometric infrastructure.

What France Is Doing About It, and What to Expect Through Summer

The French Interior Ministry announced in May that 800 additional border staff would be brought in across the major airports through the summer, with priority given to CDG, Orly, and Nice. Aéroports de Paris has also reopened some of the older manual booths that had been mothballed when the PARAFE gates were installed.

Whether that’s enough to handle peak July and August traffic, when American arrivals roughly double, is anyone’s guess.

The European Commission has acknowledged the rollout problems and is allowing individual EU member states to partially suspend EES operations during peak travel times if necessary, through to later in 2026. In practical terms, that means some of the biometric checks may be selectively skipped during the busiest periods, which should ease the bottleneck slightly.

But the core requirement, that every non-EU traveler now goes through biometric registration on arrival, isn’t going anywhere. EES is permanent, and ETIAS will be layered on top of it from late 2026 onwards.

What You Need To Do as a Traveler

My advice for anyone heading over this summer:

Bookmark travel-europe.europa.eu/etias for when ETIAS does open later this year. That’s the only official site you’ll ever need.

Do NOT apply for ETIAS. It’s not open yet. Anyone telling you otherwise is trying to scam you.

Arrive at the airport an extra hour earlier than you normally would, both on the way over and on the way back. Departures now have their own EES biometric check too.

Pack a change of clothes in your carry-on in case your connection slips.

If you can, fly into a regional airport. Bordeaux, Nantes, Marseille, and Toulouse all have direct or one-stop connections from the US via Amsterdam or Lisbon, and their arrivals halls are a fraction of the size of CDG’s.