Shoneez Sallie had been traveling for 23 hours from South Africa when she landed in Brussels, only to face a demoralizing sight that has become all too common for foreign travelers entering or leaving the European Union. There was a long, long line for passport control, barely moving.

从南非出发飞行了23个小时后，肖妮兹·萨利降落在布鲁塞尔，面对的却是如今出入欧盟的外国旅客早已屡见不鲜的沮丧一幕。边检站排起了长龙，队伍几乎一动不动。

Ms. Sallie, 39, said she stood in that line for five hours and 15 minutes. There were only six border security booths open, with officers in them processing roughly 1,000 people, she estimated. She waited so long that the rental company gave away the car she had reserved, and she had to pay about $740 more for another one.

现年39岁的萨利表示，她在队伍里站了五小时15分钟。据她估计，现场仅开放了六个边检窗口，官员们处理着大约1000名旅客。她等待的时间太长，以至于租车公司将她预订的车租给了别人，她不得不额外支付约740美元重新租了一辆。

“Some people were sitting on the floor and sort of scooting their bums up when the line moved,” she said. She posted a video on social media showing the dispirited crowd under the glaring lights of the Brussels entry hall.

“有些人坐在地上，等队伍挪动时就挪着屁股往前挤，”她说。她在社交媒体上发布了一段视频，展示了布鲁塞尔入境大厅刺眼的灯光下无精打采的人群。

It’s not just Brussels. In Lisbon, the lines peaked at six hours. In Amsterdam, KLM says its travelers are missing their flights at twice the usual rate during peak hours. Across Europe, travelers have been bemoaning delayed vacations and chaotic business travel.

遭殃的不止布鲁塞尔。在里斯本，排队等候时间最长达到了六个小时。在阿姆斯特丹，荷兰皇家航空表示高峰时段旅客错失航班的概率是平时的两倍。在整个欧洲，旅客们都在抱怨假期被延误以及商务出行陷入混乱。

All blame the same culprit: Europe’s new biometric border system, which aims to better track travelers — and keep out unauthorized visitors — by taking their fingerprints and facial scans. So far, it has succeeded at annoying them.

大家都将矛头指向同一个罪魁祸首：欧洲全新的生物识别边检系统，该系统旨在通过采集指纹和面部扫描更好地追踪旅客——并将未经授权的访客拒之门外。但到目前为止，它唯一的“成就”就是激怒了旅客。

Both travelers and much of the travel industry are irate, with the Ryanair chief condemning the “bureaucratic stupidity” of the European Union.

旅客和大部分旅游业界人士都怒不可遏，瑞安航空首席执行官更是谴责欧盟这种“官僚主义式的愚蠢”。

Though E.U. officials have pointed a finger at pre-existing problems with airport staffing and logistics, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the bloc’s executive arm, has acknowledged “technical problems” in the new system. Recognizing the severity of the problem, the European Commission is considering extending a grace period that allows airports to temporarily stop collecting key biometric data in the case of long lines.

尽管欧盟官员将指责推给了机场人员配置和流程等固有问题，但该执行机构主席乌尔苏拉·冯德莱恩承认新系统存在“技术问题”。考虑到问题的严重性，欧盟委员会正在考虑延长宽限期，允许机场在排长队的情况下暂停采集关键的生物识别数据。

布拉格边检处使用电子自助终端的乘客。在其他机场，这些自助终端尚未投入使用。

Guillaume Mercier, a spokesman for the commission, said last week that “we are now in close, in constructive contact” with nations “to see what the challenges are at certain border crossing points.”

委员会发言人纪尧姆·梅西耶上周表示，“我们目前正与各成员国保持密切、建设性的沟通”，以“了解某些边防检查站面临的挑战是什么”。

Nightmare experiences are well documented, but not typical. Based on data collected by the firm Qsensor, wait times in Amsterdam averaged 15 minutes in late June and early July, and about nine minutes in Paris.

尽管这些噩梦般的遭遇被广泛记录，但并不具有普遍性。根据Qsensor公司收集的数据，6月下旬至7月初，阿姆斯特丹的平均等候时间为15分钟，巴黎约为九分钟。

But when problems occur, they balloon quickly. Reports of hourslong lines and missed connections continue to accumulate across Europe, blanketing social media and making for office chatter among travelers around the world.

然而一旦出现问题，恶化速度极快。关于排长队数小时和错失转机航班的报道在欧洲各地不断累积，铺满了社交媒体，并成为全球旅客茶余饭后的谈资。

“My family had warned me about how long these lines were, but they were so much worse than we expected,” said Mike Sofka, 39, who waited in line with his wife at Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris for about three hours before flying back to Chicago in early July.

“我的家人曾警告过我这些队伍有多长，但实际情况比我们预期的还要糟得多，”39岁的麦克·索夫卡说道。7月初，他在飞回芝加哥前与妻子在巴黎附近的戴高乐机场排队等候了大约三个小时。

The goal of the new system is simple: Europe wants to better track who travels into and out of its 29-country free-movement zone. Anyone visiting from the outside, including from the United States and Britain, must register.

新系统的目标很简单：欧洲希望更好地追踪谁在进入和离开其29个国家组成的自由流动区。任何来自外部的访客（包括美国和英国旅客）都必须登记。

But gathering the biometric data takes time, especially when thousands of people need to do it at once. Big backups have been reported ever since the system began to be phased in during the autumn of 2025. Airport workers often do what they can to help, like distributing water bottles, but tempers can run short.

但收集生物识别数据需要时间，尤其是当成千上万的人需要同时办理时。自2025年秋季开始分阶段引入以来，该系统屡屡出现严重拥堵的情况。机场工作人员通常会尽其所能提供帮助，比如分发瓶装水，但不满仍然会爆发。

Returning home from a July holiday at Lake Como, in Italy, Taylor Henriksen, 25, had a layover in Brussels, where she waited in line for around two and a half hours to get through passport control.

结束了7月份在意大利科莫湖的假期返程期间，25岁的泰勒·亨里克森在布鲁塞尔转机，在那里她等候了大约两个半小时才通过边检。

She missed her connecting flight to Washington, D.C.

她错过了前往华盛顿的转机航班。

“They were handing out Biscoff cookies and lollipops,” she said. “It made it worse, honestly. I was like, don’t even do that.”

“他们当时在分发Biscoff焦糖饼干和棒棒糖，”她说。“老实说，这让情况变得更糟糕了。我的感觉是，别搞这些套路。”

Some people were “borderline in tears,” saying that they needed to get home to their families, but that the airport staff would not allow them to cut the line. She said one worker, rather than offering solutions, was “just saying, ‘Want a cookie? Want a cookie?’”

有些人“濒临绝望哭泣”，说他们需要赶回家见家人，但机场工作人员不允许他们插队。她说，一名工作人员非但没有提供解决方案，反而“只是在问，‘要饼干吗？要饼干吗？’”

Alexander Zinell, the chief executive of Fraport Greece, which runs airports around the country, including on the islands of Corfu and Mykonos, said that customers have at times lined up out the doors before reaching border control.

运营包括科孚岛和米克诺斯岛在内的希腊各地机场的Fraport Greece公司首席执行官亚历山大·齐内尔表示，有时客户在到达边检之前，队伍就已经排到了大门外。

Some authorities blame glitches in the technology itself — issues have been reported with both the vendors implementing the process and the European Union’s central technology. Kiosks are meant to collect the biometric images without needing border control officers to do it, but in many airports, the machines either do not work or haven’t been activated. Daniel Bunn, an American, said that was the case when he flew to Brussels on business in April.

一些部门将其归咎于技术本身的故障——据报道，供应商的部署和欧盟中央技术均存在问题。自助终端本应在不需要边检官员干预的情况下收集生物识别图像，但在许多机场，这些机器要么无法工作，要么尚未启用。美国人丹尼尔·邦恩表示，他4月份飞往布鲁塞尔出差时就遇到了这种情况。

“The kiosks are right there next to where you’re standing in line,” said Mr. Bunn, head of the Tax Foundation in Washington, explaining that he had waited for an hour and a half.

“那些自助终端就在你排队站立的位置旁边，”华盛顿税务基金会负责人邦恩解释道，他当时排了一个半小时的队。

新的生物识别边检系统旨在让欧洲变得更安全。

Ihsane Chioua Lekhli, a Brussels Airport spokesperson, said the airport had installed around 60 kiosks to reduce the number of passengers needing to go through staffed border checkpoints, but the machines are not yet in use as they are still being tested. The airport hopes to have them operational “as soon as possible,” she said.

布鲁塞尔机场发言人伊萨内·希乌阿·莱赫利表示，机场已安装了约60个自助终端，以减少需要通过人工边检口的旅客人数，但由于仍处于测试阶段，这些机器尚未投入使用。她说，机场希望“尽快”让它们投入运行。

Some airports are slowly figuring out how to manage the new system.

一些机场正在摸索如何管理这一新系统。

Pedro Moura, general coordinator of Portugal’s Borders and Foreigners Coordination Unit, said that while lines at Lisbon’s airport had reached as long as six hours in December, these days, they are an hour during peak periods. Ahead of the summer rush, the border authority was adding 369 new border guards to ease pressure. The country has also been early to roll out an app — also active in Sweden — that allows people to submit much of their information in advance.

葡萄牙边境与外国人协调单位总协调员佩德罗·莫拉表示，虽然里斯本机场的排队时间在12月曾长达六个小时，但如今在高峰时段已缩短到一个小时。在夏季高峰来临之前，边境当局增加了369名边防警卫以缓解压力。该国还率先推出了一个应用程序（该程序也在瑞典启用），允许人们提前提交大部分信息。

In some places and at quiet times of day, lines are whizzing along even with the new system.

在某些地方以及一天中的平峰时段，即使使用新系统，队伍也在快速流动。

Cameron Hewitt, a travel writer for Rick Steves’ Europe, worried that he might encounter problems when he traveled through Amsterdam from Seattle this year. “I was a little nervous,” he said. “I didn’t dillydally getting off the plane.”

Rick Steves' Europe的旅游作家卡梅伦·休伊特今年从西雅图途径阿姆斯特丹时曾担心会遇到麻烦。“我当时有点紧张，”他说。“下飞机的时候一秒都不敢耽误。”

In the end, though, he whisked through registration and made his tight connection in plenty of time.

不过最终，他迅速完成了登记，并留有充裕的时间赶上了安排得很紧凑的转机航班。

But Ms. Sallie, a travel agent who thought that the horror stories she saw online might be exaggerated, has found during her travels that meltdowns are real. She has heard from other travelers about backups in Amsterdam and Paris, and in addition to her own Brussels debacle, she had to wait in a two-hour line in Copenhagen. She arrived to her flight only five minutes before the gate closed.

作为一名旅行社代理，萨利原本以为自己在网上看到的那些惨状可能有所夸大，但她在旅行中发现，这些崩溃场面是真实存在的。她从其他旅客那里听说过阿姆斯特丹和巴黎的滞留情况，除了在布鲁塞尔遇阻，她还在哥本哈根排了两个小时的队。当她赶到登机口时，距离登机口关闭仅剩五分钟。

Border guards can already hit pause on collecting fingerprints and facial scans for up to six hours once lines get out of control. That ability is set to expire in September, but the European Union can extend it.

边防现在已经可以在队伍过长的情况下暂停采集指纹和面部扫描，最长可以持续六个小时。该权限定于9月到期，但欧盟可以予以延长。

Airlines and airports asked for greater flexibility to suspend the system pre-emptively, after they know a rush is coming but before lines have formed. E.U. officials refused that request.

航空公司和机场要求在得知客流高峰即将来临、但队伍尚未形成之前拥有更大的灵活性来预先暂停该系统。欧盟官员拒绝了这一请求。

Eventually, the authorities still insist, updated border checkpoints will be both more secure and faster than the old ways.

当局依然坚称，升级后的边检查验口最终将比旧方式更安全，同时也更快速。

Bart van den Brink, the Dutch migration minister, acknowledged that the system is a “big implementation challenge,” but said that it “will be worth it.”

荷兰移民部长巴特·范登布林克承认该系统“在实施上是个巨大挑战”，但也表示“这将是值得的”。