EU Entry/Exit System – How We Got Here, and Why

In July 2025, the European Commission (EC) set a date for the start of the EU’s long-planned Entry/Exit System (EES), confirming that the system would enter into operation on 12 October 2025 ¹. That decision gave border authorities, carriers and airport operators a target date for moving from an essentially manual process (passport stamping) to an automated, biometric-backed record of short-stay travel.

The August 2025 edition of ID & Secure Document News™ (IDN) reported on the functional scope of the system, noting that EES would record traveller identity as well as travel document data, facial image and fingerprints, and the time and location of each entry and exit (plus refusals of entry).

EES is designed to rely on shared EU biometric infrastructure rather than operating in isolation. A later article in IDN (September 2025) described eu-LISA’s (the agency that runs the large-scale IT systems used for asylum, border management, migration and justice) shared Biometric Matching System which includes EES among the systems supported by that capability.