On April 10, 2026, I arrived at Amsterdam's Schiphohl Airport, as the European Union's new automated Entry/Exit System went fully operational. They had installed a row of self-service kiosks intended to make border checks more efficient and modern.
The kiosks are similar to the ones that American citizens use for Global Entry into the United States. You slide your passport into a digital scanner and you press your fingertips on a glass reader. And then, a message appears on the screen, informing you what to do next.
I encountered my first kiosk of three as soon as I arrived into the terminal from the jetway. My encounter with the kiosk went fine. The message screen told me (in English) to proceed. Human usher/attendants greeted me and the others in the line, facilitating the flow, directing us up a flight of stairs to the large immigration hall. This is the type of room one usually encounters, with a wall of glass-encased tollbooths at the end, each staffed with an immigration officer weilding a visa stamper. The booths haven't changed, except instead of being fronted by a giant Disney-world velvet-roped snake line, there's only a small roped line, with most of the space now occupied by an army of those self-service kiosks.
The airport staff hosts directed me and my fellow river-of-people to engage with the kiosks. As far as I could tell, this second kiosk did the same exact transaction, except that at the end, it delivered one of two messages to travelers. Either go to the automated exit gate area (which means success), or go to the human tollbooth area (which means failure).
The screen on my kiosk designated me as a success. Yay. I went to the exit area, which looks like the kind of gate you would encounter at an updated train or subway station, or an office building, where you lay your pass down on the glass reader screen and if your credentials are validated, the waist-high doors retract and allow you to exit. Except that the EES also requires fingerprints again; for the third time.
The fingerprint reader probably needs some sensitivity training. You have to lean your full weight onto your wrist, while making sure that each fingertip receives enough pressure to satisfy the reader.
I failed. A red light flashed at me. The little waist-high exit doors stayed shut, and another of those nice, but by now annoying staff ushers pointed me to the end of the Disney snake line. I inched forward toward the toll booths, for the opportunity to have my passport read the old fashioned way, by a human being. A very nice, very perfect English-speaking Dutch man flipped through my passport pages, glanced at my passport, then up at my face, did not require fingerprints, and sent me through to meet my friends.
I was the only one in our group who had the pleasure of being immigration screened four times. The others only had three. Anyway, I am confident that the smart, well-run European government authorities will tackle this thing and fix it. But, I'm really glad I only had to go through four times and that I didn't miss a flight or have a four-hour wait, like some people did.
