(EUROPE) — European Union border authorities flagged nearly 7,000 non-EU travelers as overstayers in the first six months of the bloc’s new Entry/Exit System, part of about 30,000 total refusals of entry recorded since the system launched on October 12, 2025.

The figures offer one of the first snapshots of how the digital border-control system is working across the Schengen area, where officials use it to track non-EU short-stay visitors electronically rather than relying on manual passport stamps.

Authorities designed the system to enforce the Schengen rule that allows stays of 90 days in any 180-day period. By logging each arrival and departure, the Entry/Exit System gives border agencies a direct record they can use to identify overstayers and support refusals of entry.

The six-month tally shows that overstay alerts did not arrive at a steady pace. The overstay flag rate rose by 50% in the last two months of the period, with around 3,000 overstay flags, compared with around 4,000 in the first four months.

That shift means a large share of the first half-year total came late in the reporting window. In raw terms, the last two months produced three-quarters as many overstay flags as the previous four months combined.

EES applies to non-EU short-stay visitors. It records entries and exits electronically and feeds those records into border checks tied to the Schengen time-limit rule, replacing a system that long depended on officers reading and comparing stamps in travel documents.

The early numbers also connect two measures that sit at the center of border management: overstayers and refusals of entry. The first tracks people who remained beyond the legal period for a short stay. The second captures travelers turned back at the border, with the six-month count reaching about 30,000 since launch.

Not every refusal of entry reflects an overstay case, and the figures released here do not break the total into more detailed categories. Even so, the data show that border authorities are using the new electronic records to identify compliance issues soon after the system’s start.

That matters for later travel decisions because an overstay finding can weigh on future attempts to enter the Schengen area. Policymakers also watch the same figures closely, since counts of overstayers and refusals of entry help shape enforcement planning and broader visa policy discussions.

The first six months of EES therefore amount to an operational test as much as a statistical one. Border services now have a shared digital log of when non-EU short-stay visitors entered and left, and the initial record already shows thousands of overstayers and tens of thousands of refusals of entry.

Officials introduced the system to make the Schengen 90 days in any 180-day period rule easier to enforce across borders that handle large volumes of international travel. With the Entry/Exit System now in place, those checks rest on electronic entry and exit records rather than on whether a passport stamp is legible, missing or difficult to compare across multiple trips.

The first half-year figures leave a clear early picture: a digital system built to monitor short stays has already identified nearly 7,000 overstayers, while overall refusals of entry have reached about 30,000 since October 12, 2025.