Europe rolls out biometrics

Europe’s new Entry/Exit System is now fully live across 29 countries, replacing passport stamps with fingerprint, facial-image and digital border records for short-stay non-European Union travellers. (home-affairs.ec.europa.eu) The European Commission said the system began a phased rollout on October 12, 2025 and became fully operational on April 10, 2026. It records each entry, exit and refusal of entry at the external borders of the countries using it. (home-affairs.ec.europa.eu) In the first six months of the rollout, the Commission said the system logged more than 45 million border crossings and more than 27,000 refusals of entry. The database is built for non-European Union nationals coming for short stays, not for citizens of the countries inside the system. (home-affairs.ec.europa.eu) For travelers, the practical change is at the border booth. Instead of a manual stamp, border officers or self-service kiosks collect passport data, a facial image and, on a first registration, fingerprints. (travel-europe.europa.eu, travel-europe.europa.eu) The system covers 29 European countries using the Entry/Exit System, which the European Union says are the Schengen countries plus Cyprus. Ireland is not part of the Schengen Area and keeps its own border controls. (home-affairs.ec.europa.eu, citizensinformation.ie) A separate system, the European Travel Information and Authorisation System, is still not running. The official European Union ETIAS site says it will start in the last quarter of 2026 and that travelers do not need to apply now. (travel-europe.europa.eu, home-affairs.ec.europa.eu) That means Americans can still board visa-free trips to Europe without ETIAS approval today, even though they may now be enrolled in the Entry/Exit System on arrival. The two systems work at different points: ETIAS is a pre-trip authorization, while the Entry/Exit System is the border record created when a traveler actually crosses. (home-affairs.ec.europa.eu, travel-europe.europa.eu) The official ETIAS page says the fee has been set at 20 euros when the system launches, up from the earlier planned 7 euros. European Union officials said the revised timeline was endorsed on March 5, 2025, with ETIAS pushed to late 2026 after the Entry/Exit System rollout. (home-affairs.ec.europa.eu, travel-europe.europa.eu) Ireland remains outside both the Schengen Area and the Entry/Exit System, so a U.S. traveler flying only to Ireland will not go through this European Union biometric border process there. The same Citizens Information guidance says travel from Ireland into the Schengen Area still involves immigration checks because Ireland is outside the zone. (citizensinformation.ie) The immediate result is a split-screen for 2026 travel: biometric registration is already happening at much of Europe’s external border, but the extra online permission step still has a later start date. The European Union says it will announce the exact ETIAS launch date several months before applications open. (travel-europe.europa.eu, home-affairs.ec.europa.eu)