Travel News · 10 min read · Updated 29 Apr 2026

Which country drops EES biometrics next?

Greece broke ranks. Portugal keeps suspending. We've scored every Schengen country on five factors — UK visitor numbers, delay chaos, tourism dependence, EU rule-breaking history, and what they've already done — to work out who follows next.

Short on time? Let us summarise this article for you.

Greece has officially exempted British passport holders from EES biometric checks — no fingerprints, no facial scan, just a traditional stamp. Portugal has repeatedly suspended biometrics at departures from Lisbon, Porto and Faro. No other Schengen country has followed yet, but the summer pressure is building. We've modelled all 29 countries using five factors and found Spain, Italy and France in a genuine second tier of likelihood — strong economic incentives, real delay chaos, but no action yet. Italy is particularly interesting: the Meloni government has a long history of defying Brussels and faced the single worst EES incident of any country (122 passengers left behind at Milan Linate). For now, Greece is the only destination where British travellers get a completely friction-free arrival. This summer, that difference could be worth a booking decision.

What Greece actually did — and why it matters

On 18 April 2026, the Greek Embassy in London posted a quiet but significant update: British passport holders are exempt from biometric registration at all Greek border crossing points, with immediate effect from 10 April. No fingerprints. No facial scan. Traditional passport stamp. The Greek National Tourism Organisation confirmed it. The UK Foreign Office updated its travel advice accordingly.

No other Schengen country has done this. And — bluntly — Greece probably shouldn't have done it either. EU regulations permit member states to temporarily suspend biometric collection when queues become excessive, but only in six-hour windows that must be reported to the Commission. There's nothing in the rules allowing a blanket exemption for a specific nationality, indefinitely, as national policy. Greece has gone beyond what Brussels permits.

Athens knows this. It did it anyway. The calculation was simple: nearly five million British tourists visited Greece in 2025, spending €3.74 billion. Tenerife and Corfu airports can sometimes handle 2,000 UK arrivals in a single day. At other Schengen airports, EES biometric processing was already causing two-to-four-hour queues and passengers missing flights. Greece wasn't willing to let a summer of chaos drive British visitors to the handful of other sun destinations — Cyprus, Turkey, the Caribbean — that sit outside the Schengen net entirely.

Economics beat compliance. And now every other tourism-dependent Schengen country is watching to see whether Brussels does anything about it.

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What Portugal did — and how it's different

Portugal looks similar from the outside but is doing something meaningfully different. The Portuguese Public Security Police (PSP) has suspended departure biometrics at Lisbon, Porto and Faro airports — but this is reactive firefighting rather than strategic policy, and the differences matter if you're a traveller trying to plan.

The practical upshot: if you're flying to Portugal, you still hand over fingerprints on arrival. If you're flying home from Faro, you probably don't — but that could change on the day. Greece is a clean, consistent exemption at both ends. Portugal is a pressure valve that keeps popping open.

How we modelled the other 27 countries

Greece broke ranks. Portugal is stressed. Who's next? We scored all 29 Schengen countries on five factors, each out of five, to produce a likelihood ranking. This is a speculative model — an informed guess, not a forecast — but it's grounded in real data and gives a more structured basis for thinking about the summer ahead than "according to reports."

The full rankings: all 29 Schengen countries

Each factor scored 0–5. Dots represent score: darker = higher. Sources: ONS Travel Trends 2024; ECJ infringement records 1952–2026; documented EES incidents April 2026.

Tier 2: Spain, Italy and France — the ones to watch

Greece and Portugal sit clearly in Tier 1 — they've already acted. Below them, three countries score in the 14–18 range and are worth thinking about individually, because the story is different for each.

Tier 3: Croatia - a possible anomaly

While there's a lot of speculation about who could be next, only the Greek authorities have made any official announcements. However, Dubrovnik’s mayor, Mato Frankovi, said last week to The Telegraph, “We now, as Croatia, are saying if Greece did that, why shouldn’t Croatia do that?”. So even with relatively low numbers, one of its key politicians openly speculating about snubbing Brussels makes it possible Croatia will be next to break ranks.

What about the Canary Islands and Balearics?

The Canary Islands feel like they should be their own entry in this model. UK visitors are the single largest source market for Tenerife and Lanzarote — roughly 60% of international traffic at Lanzarote Airport alone comes from the UK and Germany. Tourism is close to the entire economy of these islands. If any single place in Schengen has the economic incentive to do what Greece did, it's Tenerife.

But it can't. And this is important.

Border control in Spain is a national competence, held exclusively by the Policía Nacional and directed from Madrid. The Canarian regional government — the cabildo insular of Tenerife, the Government of the Canary Islands — has no authority over the officers operating EES machines at their airports. Those airports are owned and managed by AENA, Spain's national airport authority. The Cabildo of Tenerife's powers cover health, culture, roads, sports and local services. Passport control is not on the list.

A local police commander at Lanzarote Airport cannot tell his officers to wave UK passengers through without a directive from Madrid. If he did, it would be a disciplinary matter. This is fundamentally different from Greece, where Athens is the sovereign authority over its own borders.

What the Canarian government is doing, and the Balearics may folow suit, is publicly demanding action from Madrid. David Morales, tourism spokesperson for the Canarian regional government, is calling for Spain to invoke the same article as Portugal, and that specific demand for a specific legal remedy moves us a lot closer to the EES dominoes starting to topple.

What this means for your summer booking

Right now, Greece is the only Schengen destination where British travellers can arrive, clear passport control with a traditional stamp, and get to the beach — no fingerprints, no facial scan, no queue. That is a real and meaningful practical advantage for the 2026 summer season.

If you've already booked Spain, Italy, France or Portugal — don't panic. Queues are worst at the very beginning of a system rollout and tend to improve as border staff get practiced and more kiosks go live. By high summer, processing times should be faster than they were at Easter. But plan for extra time at passport control: three hours before departure is now the sensible minimum at major Schengen airports.

And keep an eye on Italy and Spain in particular. If either moves — and the pressure on both is building — it would change the competitive picture again. We'll update this page when it happens.