Elderly British tourists whose fingerprints have worn away are being rejected by the European Union’s (EU) new biometric kiosks and sent to manual queues lasting two hours or more, according to accounts published by The Telegraph.
EES fingerprint failures have affected travellers at major holiday airports including Palma de Mallorca, Salzburg and Naples.
Under the Entry/Exit System (EES), non-Schengen arrivals, including Britons, must provide a facial scan and fingerprints at the EU border. Some airports use self-service kiosks, but passengers whose prints cannot be read are sent for manual processing, where long delays can begin.
Worn smooth at 80
Angela Evans, 80, repeatedly failed to register at Palma de Mallorca despite trying different machines with staff assistance.
“I suspect this is because of my age … and that my fingers are probably worn smooth and not ‘ridgy’ enough to record,” Evans told The Telegraph.
She was sent to a “very long queue” of mainly families and young children waiting for manual passport checks.
“I will obviously keep trying to register my fingerprints, but am not hopeful,” she added.
Rejected coming and going
Barbara, another Telegraph reader, encountered the same problem at Salzburg Airport on both arrival and departure. Several kiosks failed to read her fingerprints, and she later discovered she had none at all.
Her concern is now the documentation expected of travellers in her position.
“I would prefer a formal EU-wide procedure to enable ease of travel across borders, rather than an English letter from my GP which is unlikely to be acceptable to Schengen immigration officers,” Barbara explained.
Two hours at Naples
Ian Gardner and his wife queued for 20 minutes at Naples Airport’s EES kiosks before both were rejected.
They then joined a queue stretching outside the terminal, served by a single border officer, while nearby family and e-gate lanes moved normally.
“Tempers were fraying and people were jumping out of the queue to protest with staff, who had minimal jurisdiction over the situation,” Gardner recalled. “We had already gone past the last time for our transfer to pick up.”
After two hours, they switched to the e-gates queue and were waved into the family lane, clearing border control within five minutes. Gardner estimated the abandoned queue could have taken six hours.
“I am put off flying again until all these issues are sorted out,” he told the podcast.
Skin, work and chemotherapy
Fingerprint scans can fail for several biological reasons. Age reduces skin elasticity and ridge definition, while decades of manual work can wear ridges down.
Chemotherapy can permanently fade or erase fingerprints, while the rare condition adermatoglyphia prevents ridges forming on the fingers, toes and palms.
Some failures may also be mechanical. One reader reported that fingerprint screens can become too greasy after hours of use.
“Returning late in the day, they failed multiple times to read either mine or my husband’s or those of other travellers,” the reader commented.
Article 17 and silence
Asked about faded fingerprints, a European Commission spokesman referred The Telegraph to article 17(4) of the EES regulation.
“Persons for whom fingerprinting is physically impossible shall be exempt from the requirement to give fingerprints,” it states.
Travellers with temporary physical impairments should have this recorded and may be asked for fingerprints when leaving or entering later. Member states must also ensure travellers are treated with dignity when fingerprint capture proves difficult.
However, the Commission did not explain how airports should prevent passengers without readable fingerprints from being trapped in long manual queues, saying it does not comment on individual cases.
Twins, queues and Faro
Fingerprints are not the system’s only problem. Victoria Morrell, campaigns head at Twins Trust, reports that facial-recognition software can identify identical twins as the same person, delaying border checks.
The International Air Transport Association has warned that EES queues could reach six hours this summer, with airports in Spain, Portugal, France and Italy among the worst affected.
The system records non-EU nationals making short stays whenever they cross the external borders of 29 European countries, replacing passport stamps across most of Europe. It was introduced progressively from 12 October 2025 and became fully operational on 10 April 2026.
Commission material said that EES will modernise border checks and eventually reduce waiting times. Cyprus and Ireland continue to stamp passports manually.
Rule without a route
The problem described by these travellers is less a broken machine than a gap between regulation and practice. EU rules already recognise that some people cannot provide fingerprints, but there appears to be no clear route from that exemption to faster airport processing.
Evans, Barbara and the Gardners appeared to fall within article 17(4), yet all were sent into slow-moving queues.
The problem disproportionately affects older people, manual workers and those whose fingerprints have faded because of illness or treatment.
Barbara’s request for an EU-wide procedure raises an unresolved question: should travellers carry medical evidence, and in which language, or should border authorities establish the exemption themselves?
Two issues remain important: whether individual member states have issued guidance for these cases, and whether an exemption recorded in the EES follows a traveller across future crossings or must be established each time.
Gardner’s reluctance to fly again shows how a border-processing problem can become a commercial one. Whether airlines and tour operators serving affected airports begin raising the same concern is worth watching.