EES at Italy's Borders: The EU Counted 60 Million Entries and Exits, and Italy Has Published None

What EES is and what it records in Italy

The Entry/Exit System is the EU's register of short-stay travelers from outside the bloc. At a first crossing, the traveler gives four fingerprints and a facial image along with passport data. Every later entry and exit is logged with its date and place. A refusal of entry is logged too. The record replaced the passport stamp, according to the Commission's home affairs department and the Farnesina, Italy's Foreign Ministry.

The system covers 29 countries: 25 EU member states, every one except Ireland and Cyprus, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, according to a footnote in eu-LISA's Q1 2026 quarterly report on EES. The stay limit is one shared allowance of 90 days in any 180-day period across all of them. The Farnesina and the US Embassy in Italy both state that rule.

The register applies to non-EU nationals on short stays who hold no Schengen residence permit or long-stay visa. The Farnesina lists those who are not registered. They include EU, EEA and Swiss citizens, holders of a national long-stay D visa or a residence permit from another member state, pilots and crews of aircraft, cruise ships and trains, cross-border workers, and certain students, researchers and seasonal workers who are waiting for a permit. Children under 12 give no fingerprints but are still registered. eu-LISA's Q1 2026 quarterly report counted 978,940 fingerprint exemptions between 1 January and 31 March 2026, mainly for children under 12. Records are kept for three years, or five years for people who overstay, under Article 34 of the EES Regulation 2017/2226.

Italy switched the system on at Rome Fiumicino and Milan Malpensa on 12 October 2025, the first day. Other Italian airports followed from 20 October, according to SOGAER. Hardware counts exist only airport by airport, and only in the press. Aeroporti di Roma installed 210 kiosks at Fiumicino and Ciampino, LaPresse reported on 12 October 2025. At Venice, SAVE's figures as reported by QualityTravel in late 2025 were 48 kiosks and 24 e-gates, with 12 kiosks and 6 e-gates at Treviso and 21 kiosks and 6 e-gates at Verona. We found no national total of kiosks, e-gates or border officers, and no figure for EES spending in Italy.

The official Italian information has not kept pace. When we opened the Farnesina's EES page on 28 October 2026, it still said the system would come into force on 12 October 2025, in the future tense. It made no mention of full operation from 10 April 2026, and gave no Italian counts. That page is Italy's official visa site and the top organic result for US searches on EES in Italy, according to Ahrefs data for 13 October 2026.

The rollout timetable and the safety valve

The rules for the launch sit in Regulation (EU) 2025/1534, adopted in Brussels on 18 July 2025. The Commission set 12 October 2025 as the start date on 30 July 2025. The regulation gave every country a 180-day progressive start with fixed thresholds in Article 4. Each country's thresholds are shares of its own "estimated number of border crossings", which Article 2(3) defines as the yearly average of short-stay crossings by non-EU nationals over the two calendar years before the start.

Counting 12 October 2025 as day 1, day 30 fell on 10 November 2025, and by then each country had to register at least 10% of that estimate. Biometrics were optional for the first 60 days, to 10 December 2025. By day 90, 9 January 2026, biometrics had to run at at least half of all crossing points and at least 35% of crossings had to be registered. Il Sole 24 Ore reported the 35% threshold as applying from 10 January, the day after day 90. By day 150, 10 March 2026, biometrics had to run at every crossing point with at least 50% registered. By day 170, 30 March 2026, every covered traveler had to be registered. All five dates are our calculation from the start date.

During the progressive start, recital 20 told border officers to disregard the system's automated stay calculator and its list of overstayers, because files could be incomplete. The progressive start ended on 9 April 2026, the last day named by Commission spokesperson Markus Lammert. eu-LISA announced on 10 April 2026 that the system was fully deployed at the external borders of every participating country.

The regulation also built a safety valve. Article 7(1) let a country suspend EES fully or partly at certain crossing points during the progressive start, for a system failure or when traffic made waiting times excessive. A partial suspension drops the biometrics; a full one records no data. The country had to notify the Commission and eu-LISA within 6 hours. Article 7(3) kept a narrower option for 90 days after the progressive start ended. A country could drop biometrics at a crossing point for a maximum of 6 hours in exceptional traffic. Article 7(4) adds 60 days to that window if fewer than 80% of the individual files created during the progressive start contain biometric data.

The 90-day window ran to about 8 July 2026, by our calculation. With the 60-day extension, it closed on about 6 September 2026, also by our calculation; some sources print 7 September, a one-day counting difference. Travel Tomorrow reported on 3 September 2026 that IATA was urging the EU to extend the flexibility beyond 6 September, and Newland Chase, in an undated web report read on 28 October 2026, said the flexibility had lapsed. With the end in September, the 60-day extension ran. Our inference is that fewer than 80% of files from the progressive start carried biometrics. No published figure confirms it, for Italy or for the EU.

The State of Schengen report said suspension had been used on a limited number of occasions. It named no country, crossing point or date. Italy has published no list of its own suspensions under Article 7.

The end of the window drew pressure. Nine countries, Italy among them, asked in July 2026 to keep the flexibility, Missionline reported. The Commission rejected calls for a suspension in July, according to a paraphrase of its position by EMN Belgium on 7 July 2026. TRAVEL Extra and InsideFlyer reported on 15 September 2026 that the nine had received a quiet extension. Both reports trace to a single Sunday Times story, and we found no legal instrument behind them.

What has been counted, and what Italy has not published

The EU's count comes in two kinds. Official documents carry the figures to April 2026. Everything after that reaches the public through press accounts of Commission statements.

The first official document is the State of Schengen report, COM(2026) 150, dated 18 May 2026, with data to 20 April. It gives more than 60 million entries and exits, more than 30,000 refusals of entry, nearly 800 people flagged as security threats and almost 7,000 refused for overstaying. eu-LISA has published two EES quarterly reports. The first, announced on 18 May 2026, covers 12 October to 31 December 2025 and counts 8,180 refusals, 283 revocations, 479 extensions of stay and 492,345 fingerprint exemptions. The second covers the first quarter of 2026; it was listed on 10 July and announced on 13 July 2026. It counts 19,985 refusals, 665 revocations and 11,885 extensions of stay between 1 January and 31 March. US nationals received 6,565 of those extensions, Canadians 1,846 and Japanese nationals 1,001, according to eu-LISA's news page. The US share is 55.2% by our calculation. Neither quarterly report gives a total of entries and exits or a row for any member state. Lovguiden reported on 13 October 2026 that Harant of eu-LISA gave 28,165 refusals from October 2025 to March 2026, which equals the sum of the two reports (8,180 plus 19,985, our check).

The later figures are larger and less documented. The Commission's release of about 30 March 2026 gave more than 45 million crossings and more than 24,000 refusals, as cited by eucrim and by Travel Trade Journal on 9 April. Brunner's figure of 160 million movements and 50,000 refusals to 21 August appeared in Travel Tomorrow on 3 September 2026. His 220 million comes from a speech in Saarbrücken, catalogued as SPEECH/26/2192 and summarized by Lovguiden on 16 October 2026. We could not open the speech text, and no method has been published for the figure.

The Local wrote on 18 May 2026 of about 32,000 refusals in six months, consistent with the report's more than 30,000. The Local also printed overstayer counts of 4,000, 7,000 and 8,739 in February and May 2026, which reflect different cut-off dates. We use the report's figure of almost 7,000.

The State of Schengen report mentions Italy twice, both times in footnotes and neither time with an EES figure. Footnote 7 lists Italy among the countries that increased border staffing in 2025. Footnote 19 lists Italy as one of six countries, with Greece, Spain, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland, that have not tested their border-management contingency plan.

We found no Italian count of EES registrations, entries, exits or refusals, no measured waiting time at any Italian airport, no list of Article 7 suspensions, no biometric share for early files, and no national total of kiosks, e-gates, border police or EES funding.

The queue claims, tested

Most of the queue numbers in circulation are forecasts or testimony. None is a measurement taken at an Italian airport.

The most quoted figure is six hours. Open and Tgcom24 reported on 25 June 2026 that queues of up to six hours were possible. The number came from a forecast by IATA and ACI Europe, and it was not a reading at Fiumicino. The one measured six-hour wait in our sources was at Lisbon, in December 2025, as Il Post reported on 12 August 2026. Thomas Reynaert of IATA said six-hour waits were recorded during the summer, Travel Tomorrow reported on 3 September 2026, without naming an airport.

Other figures are shorter and come from interested parties. Italian air-transport associations warned of waits of up to three hours in a letter in April 2026, cited by The Local on 9 June. Ryanair complained of hour-long passport queues over the May bank holiday weekend on 8 May 2026, and renewed its call on the Italian government to suspend EES until September. As an airline, Ryanair is an interested party.

The best-documented incident in Italy happened at Milan Linate on 12 April 2026. Geopop reported on 14 April that more than 120 passengers missed an easyJet flight to Manchester, which left with 27 on board. IATA's blog put the number at over 100 on 21 May. The two counts are compatible, and we use the lower bound both support.

At the other end of the scale sit official assurances without a method. The figure of 70 seconds per check came from the Commission via TASR and from an unnamed official quoted by Quotidiano. We found no study behind it. Geopop gave three to five minutes for a first registration. SAVE gave 1.5 minutes at Venice kiosks.

The most consequential warning came from Rome. Marco Troncone, chief executive of Aeroporti di Roma, told the Financial Times on 25 June 2026 that "there is no way that we can deliver 100% of the enrolment", ANSA reported. ANSA and Wanted in Rome wrote that Rome's airports could be forced to suspend biometric checks. A Euronews Italia headline on 26 June 2026 described the airports as ready to suspend them. We found no formal request and no announced suspension.

Italy has not declared a national suspension. The Local's fact-check of 9 June 2026 cited the Commission, via the BBC in May, as saying that Italy and Portugal did not intend to exempt any nationality. The only documented carve-out was for accredited participants of the Winter Olympics, at Malpensa, Linate, Venice and Verona airports from 6 to 22 February 2026, reported by Il Sole 24 Ore on 29 December 2025. QualityTravel reported on 7 August 2026 that EES was used only partly at Milan airports on the busiest days. That account has no official documentation. A claim on visa sites, collected by Wego on 14 August 2026, that Italy had suspended EES until 30 September and would stamp passports after 45 minutes of waiting has no decree behind it.

On staffing, the SAP police union told Il Post on 12 August 2026 that Malpensa had only 35 border police on duty. Italy publishes no national figure.

Italy's exposure to the new checks

The Bank of Italy's survey of international tourism shows how many trips the new rules touch. Its 2025 tables, published on 26 June 2026, count 92.2 million trips by foreign travelers, up 4.1%, and €56,724 million in spending, up 4.6%. American, British and Canadian travelers made 12.3 million of those trips, or 13.3% by our calculation. Their spending of €13,603 million was 24.0% of the total, also our calculation. Spending by each of the three markets rose in 2025.

The survey counts trips, including same-day and repeat visits, so 4.1 million American trips is not 4.1 million Americans. British travelers are fully liable to EES, which makes the United Kingdom Italy's largest EES market by trips in this table. Residents of Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein count as non-EU in the survey but sit inside EES. EU citizens and residents are exempt even when they fly in from outside the bloc. The Bank of Italy publishes no total for all non-EU travelers, so no exact EES-liable total can be built from its tables.

The airports tell a similar story with the same limits. ENAC, Italy's civil aviation authority, counted 229.7 million airport passengers in 2025, up about 5%. International traffic was 157.2 million, or 68%, with 43% of all passengers on EU routes and 25% on non-EU routes. The non-EU share works out to about 57.4 million arrivals and departures by our calculation. That figure includes flights to the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Albania and Türkiye, and it includes EU citizens on those flights. Fiumicino, the main airport for Rome, handled 50.9 million passengers, 22% of the national total. ENAC's summary has no split between Schengen and non-Schengen traffic by airport. For Venice, the only hardware figures are the kiosk and e-gate counts reported in the press. Cruise traffic is unmeasured by nationality. Italian ports handled 14.79 million cruise passengers in 2025, Civitavecchia 3.556 million of them, according to Cemar as reported by Shipping Italy on 19 January 2026.

Refusals give the only pre-EES baseline. Eurostat counted 132,600 refusals of entry at the EU's external borders in 2025, up 7.1% from 123,835. Italy had the highest number of refusals at sea borders in the EU, 1,405, according to Eurostat's Statistics Explained. Italy's total of 8,875 refusals, fifth in the EU, appears only in Eunews on 12 May 2026. Dividing that press figure by Eurostat's EU total gives 6.7%, our calculation. The Local reported on 18 May 2026 that 80 UK nationals were refused entry to Italy. These are national returns to Eurostat, most of them from before EES ran fully. From 2026, every refusal of a short-stay visitor is written into EES, and no count for Italy has been published.

ETIAS: no date, a €20 fee and a market for copycat sites

ETIAS is the second half of the system and the half that does not yet exist. It will be an online travel authorization for visa-exempt non-EU nationals traveling to 30 countries, the 29 EES countries plus Cyprus. When we opened the official site on 28 October 2026, it said that ETIAS is currently not in operation and that no applications are being collected. It said the EU will announce the start date several months before launch.

The target has moved. The Commission told airlines on 28 April 2025 that ETIAS was planned for the last quarter of 2026, and DG HOME repeated that on 17 July 2025. eu-LISA told The Independent on 13 July 2026 that the target remained the fourth quarter of 2026. The Financial Times, citing unnamed sources, reported that an end-2026 start was no longer feasible. SchengenVisaInfo wrote on 19 October 2026 that ETIAS has no launch date. Any year printed elsewhere is a projection.

The fee is settled. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/1411 raised it from the original €7 to €20. It was adopted on 16 July 2025 and published in the Official Journal on 29 October 2025. It came into force on 18 November 2025, by our calculation of the 20-day rule. The fee is payable only once ETIAS operates. Applicants under 18 or over 70 pay nothing, as do family members of EU citizens covered by Article 2(1)(c) of the ETIAS Regulation, and all of them still need the authorization.

An authorization is linked to a passport and lasts up to three years or until the passport expires, whichever comes first, so a new passport needs a new ETIAS. Most applications are decided within minutes. The rest are decided within four days, extendable to 14 days if more information is requested or 30 days if an interview is required. An authorization does not guarantee entry. The Commission told airlines on 28 April 2025 that it planned a six-month transition period, according to the carriers working group summary published by eu-LISA; the length of a later grace period appears only in press reports, attributed to ABTA by Travel Gossip.

There is nothing to apply for yet. Paid sites that offer to file an ETIAS application are unofficial. Frontex counted more than 50 such sites in 2023. ABTA counted more than 60 in October 2025, Travel Gossip reported, and more than 150 a year later, The Local reported on 16 October 2026. The only official site is travel-europe.europa.eu. British travelers will recognize the model. The UK's own Electronic Travel Authorisation costs £20 according to GOV.UK on 28 October 2026, after a rise that took effect on 8 April 2026, The Local reported on 7 February 2026. A full Italy entry-requirements guide is planned on this site for travelers who want the document checklist.

The claims below circulated widely in 2025 and 2026. Three of them came from our own planning documents, and we list those too.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or Australia going to Italy are registered in EES at their first crossing, with four fingerprints and a photo. There is no online pre-registration and no fee. The checks happen at the border. Whether a trip starts in Rome, takes in Florence or ends in Naples, the 90-day allowance counts across all 29 EES countries together. Keep proof of every exit, such as boarding passes, in case a record is incomplete. Carry a passport valid for at least three months after departure; the US Embassy in Italy recommends six months and two blank pages. Allow extra time on a first entry, since no measured waiting time exists to plan around. Do not pay any site for an ETIAS application, because ETIAS has no start date. Rules can change, so check the official EU site before you travel.

Tourism businesses and investors are planning around a system whose effects in Italy are unmeasured. The exposure is clear from the Bank of Italy's tables. American, British and Canadian visitors brought €13,603 million in 2025, 24.0% of foreign tourist spending by our calculation, and most of those travelers now fall under EES; EU dual nationals and residence-permit holders are exempt. The operating data is missing. No airport operator has published a waiting time, a registration count or an incident log. The Article 7 flexibility lapsed in early September 2026, according to press reports, so the remaining tools are staffing and hardware, and Italy publishes no national total of either. When ETIAS starts, the official notice will come several months ahead, which gives tour operators time to brief clients. Firms that sell to visa-exempt markets should watch the official ETIAS site for that notice and not rely on dates printed by third parties.

Journalists and analysts can cite these figures with confidence. More than 60 million entries and exits and more than 30,000 refusals were recorded to 20 April 2026, in the State of Schengen report. eu-LISA's quarterly reports give 8,180 refusals for 12 October to 31 December 2025 and 19,985 for the first quarter of 2026. The €20 ETIAS fee is set by Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/1411. The 80% biometric trigger and the 6-hour limit come from Regulation (EU) 2025/1534. Eurostat counted 132,600 refusals in 2025, and Italy recorded 1,405 at sea borders, the highest in the EU. Several claims should not be repeated as fact. These include six-hour queues at Italian airports, a suspension at Rome, a national suspension until 30 September, a quiet extension after 6 September, and ETIAS in 2026 or April 2027. The 70-second check has no published method. The 160 million and 220 million totals need attribution to Brunner via the press. The finding for the series is the same one we reached in Rome and Venice. Italian and EU authorities publish rules and totals, but no local measurement. This is the third article in a row to hit that gap.