On 8 May, the airline Ryanair once again appealed to the Portuguese Government to suspend, until September, the application of the Entry/Exit System (EES), intended to control passengers from outside the Schengen area, to avoid constraints at national airports during the peak summer season.

When questioned by Lusa, the Ministry of Internal Administration stated that Portugal "maintains its commitment to ensuring' the operation of the EES 'in accordance with European Union law, and no suspension of this system is foreseen".

Despite this, it noted, "the applicable European framework allows, in exceptional and duly limited circumstances, the adoption of operational measures, such as the suspension of biometric data collection (facial image and fingerprints), at certain border crossing points, when the intensity of traffic may generate excessive waiting times."

This operational management is the responsibility of the PSP and, "during the temporary suspensions, border control complies with all defined security protocols, with biometric data collection resuming as soon as the reference parameters are met," the supervisory authority explained.

High waiting times

On the morning of 17 May, border control recorded waiting times exceeding two hours at Porto airport and an hour and a half at Lisbon and Faro airports, which the PSP justified as technical and IT issues associated with a high flow of passengers from outside the Schengen area.

On 16 May, there were also delays of more than an hour at the control in the departures area of Lisbon airport, due to "technical/computer difficulties".

On April 11 and 12, the collection of biometrics at departures at Lisbon, Porto and Faro airports had already been suspended due to longer-than-desired waiting times for passengers to board, the PSP indicated at the time.

The EES (Electronic System for Security), which replaced the passport stamp with the digital registration of the photograph and fingerprints of non-EU passengers, progressively came into operation on 12 October 2025 in Portugal and the other countries of the Schengen area and, since then, waiting times have worsened, especially at Lisbon airport.

At the end of December 2025, the Government announced contingency measures at Humberto Delgado Airport in Lisbon to reduce waiting times in the arrivals area, namely the suspension of the EES for three months, which has since resumed operation.