Enabling EES Compliance: Scalable and Secure Biometric Border Solutions for Schengen

EES will be live by October 2025. Thales provides the technology to meet that deadline—at scale. 

With a strong footprint across air, land, and sea border environments, Thales delivers mission-critical EES solutions. From biometric enrolment kiosks to secure middleware interfacing with national systems and the EES Central System, our solutions are designed to comply with eu-LISA technical specifications, support GDPR-compliant data flows, and integrate seamlessly into operational workflows. Thales ensures Member States can meet EES readiness with confidence, performance, and security.

A Technical Transformation of Schengen Borders

EES replaces manual stamping of passports for third-country nationals with automated biometric registration, including capture of four fingerprints and a facial image. This data must be encrypted and transmitted in near real-time to the central eu-LISA-managed EES database. Deployments must support fast enrolment throughput, robust liveness detection, identity verification against national and European systems, and secure integration with ETIAS, SIS, and VIS. 

Addressing Operational and Systemic Constraints

Border authorities face multiple challenges: 

• Minimizing wait times in high-traffic areas 
• Ensuring interoperability with national border management systems and eu-LISA infrastructure 
• Complying with EU cybersecurity standards (NIS2) and data protection regulations 
• Enabling flexible deployment (fixed, mobile, or hybrid) 

Thales supports these requirements with modular platforms, high-availability middleware, and proven identity management capabilities tailored to each Member State’s architecture. 

Field-Validated Deployments Across Europe

Across the EU, EES implementation presents complex and varied challenges—ranging from technical integration with national systems to logistical constraints in dense or remote border zones. Thales has delivered customized solutions tailored to the distinct environments and operational demands of each country. 

In Spain, the border posts of Ceuta and Melilla are among the most sensitive and high-volume external borders in the Schengen Area. These enclaves manage both high pedestrian throughput and security-sensitive crossings, often involving travelers with limited documentation or requiring enhanced identity verification. Thales deployed a fully integrated biometric solution combining face and fingerprint capture, real-time multi-modal matching, and secure, encrypted data transmission to the Spanish national interface. These systems are designed to support over 10,000 travelers per day, without requiring additional manual interventions. Local infrastructure limitations were addressed with resilient edge processing and redundant data links to prevent service disruption. 

Across Europe, Member States face a common set of constraints but with country-specific nuances: 

• France needed to retrofit biometric capabilities into both new and legacy airport terminals while maintaining ISO-standard passenger flow rates. Thales supported this with self-service kiosks and eGate systems featuring high-speed biometric enrolment (under 60 seconds) and GDPR-compliant data handling. 
• Other Member States required mobile units or modular deployments to cover low-traffic land borders or seasonal surges, such as tourism peaks. 
• In every case, ensuring full interoperability with eu-LISA’s central system and alignment with the latest technical release packages has been critical for compliance and future scalability. 

To date, Thales has deployed over 1,500 biometric enrolment and inspection units across air, land, and sea borders—each integrated with national systems and engineered for long-term maintainability, firmware upgradability, and remote system monitoring.