Greece is exempting British passport holders from the European Union’s new Entry/Exit System (EES) biometric registration step at all Greek border crossing points, according to a notice posted by the Greek Embassy in London. The exemption took effect on April 10, 2026, the same day the EES became fully mandatory across 29 Schengen states, and applies at Greek border crossing points without an announced end date.
Under the EES, non-EU travelers entering the Schengen area are required to register fingerprints and a facial image at their first border crossing, with the biometric record stored for three years and reused to automate subsequent entry and exit checks. The system replaces passport stamping for short-stay travelers and is intended to standardize overstay detection across the bloc. Greece’s carve-out removes the fingerprint and facial enrollment step for UK passport holders specifically, while other Schengen states continue to enroll UK travelers under the standard EES workflow.
The exemption covers the fingerprint and facial enrollment step specifically; entry and exit records for the UK cohort will continue to be captured to meet EES obligations. The Greek National Tourism Organisation framed the move as a step to reduce wait times at peak travel periods, citing 4.89 million UK arrivals in Greece in 2025.
The EES rolled out unevenly. ID Tech previously reported on a chaotic launch with technical failures and long queues, and airport industry groups including ACI EUROPE had warned of systemic disruption risk as passenger volumes scaled up through the spring travel season. Greece’s exemption effectively shifts some of that capacity pressure off its own borders while the system beds in elsewhere in the bloc.
The legal basis for country-level carve-outs has not been publicly addressed by the European Commission. EES is a regulation with direct effect, and deviations are typically framed as processing-mode choices rather than formal exemptions. Member states retain operational flexibility in how enrollments are captured, but the underlying obligation to register biometric data for non-EU short-stay travelers is part of the regulation itself. Whether other Schengen states follow Greece’s approach for specific nationalities will be a test of how uniformly the EU enforces the biometric registration requirement in the rollout’s first year.
Sources: The Independent, GreekReporter
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
