No more passport stamps. EU launches new biometric border checks

The European Union is switching to a new biometric Entry/Exit System starting April 10, replacing passport stamps.

If you're heading to the European Union for spring break or summer vacation this year, get ready for a new screening process at the border. The EU has done away with passport stamps and is now going all-biometric instead.

Starting April 10, all EU border crossings in the Schengen Area will fully switch over to the new Entry/Exit System, which requires border officers to take a picture of a traveler's face and/or scan their fingerprints.

“For stamp collectors, this is slightly disappointing,” Vykintas Maknickas, CEO of Saily, an eSim provider, told USA TODAY. “The EU collects your image, your biometric data like fingerprints and it uses it to basically timestamp how much time you’re in the EU specifically, so it will be way more difficult to overstay, and if you overstay, they will know.”

Maknickas warned that, while the process is likely to be more efficient than getting passport stamps in the long-run, there could be some hiccups in the early days of its full implementation, so you might want to pad your layovers if you can.

“You might need more time, specifically during this period of adaptation," he said. "The season for people traveling to the EU is just starting out, so it’s quite good timing for it to be implemented now instead of the summer when the majority of travelers are traveling to the EU from the U.S.”