ETIAS has no fingerprint scan. What the application asks

ETIAS will not ask for your fingerprints, a face scan or any biometric data. That step happens at the border, under the Entry/Exit System, which is already live. ETIAS is entirely online: you complete a form from home, pay €20 and receive a decision by email. Here is exactly what that form asks, and who sees the data afterwards.

What the application form collects

The ETIAS form is set out in Article 17 of EU Regulation 2018/1240. It asks for the following.

• Identity: full name, any other names you use, surname at birth, date and place of birth, sex, current nationality and any other nationalities you hold, plus the first names of your parents.
• Travel document: document type, number, issuing country, issue date and expiry date. It has to be a travel document a visa can be affixed to, which in practice means a passport, not a national identity card.
• Contact details: home address (or, if you have none, your city and country of residence), email address and, if you have one, a phone number.
• First intended stay:the country where you plan to stay first, and optionally the address. If an application needs manual review because of something you declared, rather than a match in another country’s records, that country’s authorities handle it.
• Education and occupation: your level of education (primary, secondary, higher or none) and your current job group, chosen from a fixed list. Your exact job title and employer are only asked for if your application goes to manual review and the reviewing country requests them.
• EU family members:only if you claim status as the family member of an EU citizen under EU free movement rules. You then give that person’s personal and contact details and explain your family tie.
• Someone applying for you: if another person fills in the form on your behalf, their name, contact details, relationship to you and a signed declaration of representation.

The system also records the IP address from which you submit the application.

The background questions

Beyond personal information, the form asks three background questions. A yes answer does not mean automatic refusal. It leads to follow-up questions and sends the application to manual review by the ETIAS National Unit of the country you named as your first intended stay, which assesses the risk and decides.

• Criminal convictions:whether you have been convicted of any offence on the list in the regulation’s Annex in the last 15 years, or of a terrorist offence in the last 25 years, and if so when and where. Those periods come from the 2023 Commission decision that fixes the form’s wording.
• Conflict zones: whether you have stayed in a specific war or conflict zone in the past 10 years, and why.
• Removal and return decisions: whether you have been the subject of a decision requiring you to leave a country, or of a return decision, in the past 10 years.

There is no question on the form about past visa refusals. The automated checks do look for them in the EU’s own records: a refused, annulled or revoked Schengen short-stay visa in the Visa Information System, or a refusal-of-entry alert in the Schengen Information System. The visa refusal and ETIAS guide covers what a past refusal means for an application.

The criminal convictions question is explored in full in the ETIAS criminal record guide, including which specific offences are in scope and how the review works in practice.

What the form does not involve

No appointment and no consulate visit to apply. You do not attend a visa centre or send physical documents. The application is online, and if a reviewing country asks for extra documents you upload electronic copies. In rare cases, if those are not enough, the official FAQ says you may be invited to an interview at a consulate or online.

No fingerprints, no facial photograph and no biometric enrolment. The confusion between ETIAS and the Entry/Exit System (EES) is common, because both apply to the same group of travellers and are frequently discussed together. But they do different things. ETIAS is the online authorisation you obtain before you fly. EES is the biometric registration that happens at the border post when you arrive. The EES vs ETIAS explainer sets out what each system records and why both exist.

The official ETIAS FAQ says most applications will be processed within minutes, or at the latest within 96 hours. Applicants asked for more information or invited to an interview may wait up to a further 30 days.

Who can access your ETIAS data

Every application is checked automatically by the ETIAS Central System. If those checks flag a possible match, the ETIAS Central Unit, set up within Frontex, verifies it. Where the match is confirmed or in doubt, the ETIAS National Unit of the country responsible reviews the application by hand and can see the full file.

Law enforcement access is permitted but restricted. Designated authorities in EU member states and Europol can consult ETIAS records to prevent, detect or investigate terrorist offences and other serious criminal offences. A national authority has to send a reasoned request in a specific case, which an independent central access point checks before any data is released. It is not a routine check on every traveller.

Airlines, ferry operators and coach companies cannot read your file. When a carrier checks your ETIAS status before boarding, it gets an “OK” or “NOT OK” answer through a separate read-only database holding only the minimum data needed.

Your rights over the data

Under the ETIAS regulation, you can ask the ETIAS Central Unit, or the National Unit that handled your application, for access to the data held about you and for corrections if anything is inaccurate. It has to reply within 30 days. When you apply, you are given contact details for Frontex’s data protection officer and the European Data Protection Supervisor.

A refusal must come with written reasons, and applicants have the right to appeal through the national authority of the member state that conducted the review.

Does any of this apply right now?

No. ETIAS applications are not open, and no action is required or possible today. The official ETIAS website says the system is “currently not in operation” and that the EU will announce the start date several months before launch. Press reporting on EU planning points to 2027. Until the official EU portal opens, no legitimate ETIAS application can be made anywhere. Any website asking for your personal information or money in connection with ETIAS right now is not operating legitimately. The ETIAS status page carries the current confirmed position and will be updated when a formal announcement is made.