I travel Europe extensively each year and see all the 'dead' EES machines at each airport I fly through. I wonder if the six month ramp up period for each country to join the EES is because they now have to power the machines up and likely apply years of updates to the software running on them. Then they have to all be tested again to see if they actually work. Every time I fly through a European airport and see the machines off to the side I think of the copious amount of work that will be required to get them running again.

I personally am going to miss passport stamps. For the time being, any country that phases in the rollout of EES will still be stamping passports but that will stop EU-wide by April 2026. Of course they've blown the date targets on rolling out EES several times so there's no guarantee it sticks this time either.

-RM