How to navigate long EES queues if you have a disability

If you have a disability, book special assistance and use reduced-mobility lanes—hubs such as Schiphol and Madrid already pair help with Entry/Exit System (EES) checks. Fingerprints can be skipped if physically impossible, and staff must protect your dignity. Summer Schengen travel, including peak festival trips around tomorrowland season, still means long biometric queues.

Europe’s biometric Entry/Exit System, fully rolled out in April, requires non-EU travellers to give fingerprints and facial images on first Schengen entry. The Airports Council International says border waits have hit up to five hours in some cases, creating “unsustainable pressure” for staff. That risk is sharper for passengers with visible or non-visible disabilities, injuries or age-related limits.

Key Takeaways

• Request airport special assistance when you book; staff can guide you through EES kiosks or desks.
• Schiphol and Aena’s Madrid and Barcelona airports offer reduced-mobility lanes or lounges with EES support.
• If fingerprints are physically impossible, EES rules allow an exemption; temporary injuries are recorded for later capture.
• Nearly ten European countries want biometric flexibility kept past 6 September 2026 to cut chaos.
• Ryanair warns of significant EES delays at 15 popular summer airports—allow extra time.

For more border and travel disruption alerts in our Fintech & Crypto Alerts section, the practical steps below matter most right now.

How can airports help if you have reduced mobility?

Schiphol says passengers should opt into staff assistance for arrivals, departures or transfers when booking. Everyone still completes EES via kiosks or desks, but helpers can guide people with reduced mobility through dedicated facilities “to speed up the process or provide tailored support”.

Schiphol has placed EES kiosks in assistance lounges and added a dedicated “reduced mobility” lane and desk. Travellers on transfer caddies can use a dedicated passage without stepping off. If self-service machines fail, Dutch border officers will manually register passport details, fingerprints and facial images at booths.

Spain’s Aena group says Madrid and Barcelona run separate queues for families and people with reduced mobility, with manual passport control. About 340 airports and 31 airlines in the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower network train staff to support non-visible disabilities, often via those assistance lanes.

What if you cannot give fingerprints at an EES kiosk?

Per reporting on EES disability rules, if it is physically impossible to give fingerprints on a kiosk, the passenger is exempt. Temporary hand or finger impairment is logged in EES, and fingerprints must be submitted later when possible on the next Schengen trip.

Border authorities may ask for clarification on temporary impossibility, but member states must keep “appropriate procedures guaranteeing the dignity of the person.” Guards may postpone biometric enrolment until exit when capture is impossible or difficult due to injuries, disabilities, age or other physical features.

EU Fundamental Rights Agency guidance urges non-discriminatory handling for older people, people with disabilities and children, accessible kiosks, wheelchair space, and mobile tablets—as used at Marseille—for reduced-mobility checks.

Why are EES delays still worsening this summer?

Ryanair says passengers face slow processing and long queues on arrivals and departures at Lisbon, Tenerife South, Madrid, Lanzarote, Alicante, Malaga, Milan Bergamo, Milan Malpensa, Verona, Paris Beauvais, Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt Hahn, Krakow and Budapest. It advises UK travellers to allow extra time at passport control.

Temporary flexibility to suspend biometric collection runs until early September. Switzerland, Malta, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium, Greece, Italy and Portugal want that tool kept beyond 6 September 2026. Ryanair backs extending flexibilities into early 2027 so airports can fix kiosks and boost staffing.

COO Neal McMahon said families “should be thinking about suitcases, suncream and sangria, not standing in passport queues for hours,” arguing passengers “should not be the testing ground for unfinished border infrastructure.”