The EU Passport Benefit Nobody Mentions: You Skip the Immigration Line, Both Ways

My Personal Experience Before Getting a Romanian and Polish Passport

A few years ago, while still traveling on my Canadian passport, I landed in Stockholm, Sweden as part of a ten day Eurotrip with a friend. I was jet lagged, grumpy, and wanting nothing more than to get to the hotel and lie down for a few hours after arriving in the early morning. The last thing I wanted was a long immigration line, especially since I'd already filed both my Polish and Romanian citizenship applications by that point. I found myself stuck in a line for almost an hour and a half, feeling helpless, with a real fear-of-missing-out feeling, wishing I already had one of those EU passports in hand. To my right, I watched people with EU passports breeze through with no line at all, while only two immigration booths were open for the rest of us.

On the last day of the trip, a different kind of stress hit me. I'd arrived at the Munich airport a reasonable three hours ahead of my flight, and I still found myself worrying whether I'd make it. You don't just wait in a security line in airports like Munich, but you also have to clear a separate immigration line to exit the European Union regardless of where you depart from. That line ran about an hour. And after that, you still have to show your passport again before boarding, in a final check after "clearing EU exit customs." The whole thing was exhausting. Once again, all I could think was how much easier it would have been to already have that Polish or Romanian passport in hand, while the EU passport holders next to me walked straight through.

North America: Global Entry, NEXUS, Pre-Check, Clear

In North America, we have trusted traveler programs like Pre-Check, Global Entry, and NEXUS, plus corporate programs like Clear, which can be combined with Pre-Check for even faster screening at airports and, increasingly, at stadiums for sporting events and concerts. Global Entry and NEXUS are the US and Canadian versions of the same idea, and both include Pre-Check as a bonus. You skip the line, scan your biometrics at a kiosk, and walk up to an officer only if you need to declare something. If you travel often, domestically or internationally, it genuinely changes how you move through an airport, and a lot of premium credit cards already include it.

What the EU Doesn't Give You, Unless You're a Citizen

Here's what none of those premium cards cover: the European equivalent. Fly into Italy from North America and you'll clear customs and immigration for both Italy and the EU on arrival, and the lines can be a real gamble. I've personally stood in lines over an hour and a half long, and I've heard worse from other travelers. It doesn't stop at arrival either. You also have to exit the EU when you leave, which might mean clearing out through Germany after backpacking through Italy, France, and Germany on your way home.

It's gotten more involved recently, too. The EU's new Entry/Exit System went fully live on April 10, 2026, replacing the old manual passport stamp with mandatory biometric registration, fingerprints and a facial scan, for every non-EU traveler, on both entry and exit, across the Schengen Area. There have already been real, reported delays since it rolled out.

Skipping the Line With an EU Passport

A Polish or Romanian passport (both EU countries) gets you something close to a free version of what Global Entry and NEXUS give you back home. EU passport holders go through a separate line on arrival, skip the long non-EU line entirely, scan their passport and biometrics, and walk through, usually without saying a word to anyone.

There are plenty of other benefits to holding an EU passport, and I'll get into those in another post here on the European Roots Consulting blog. But this one is the benefit nobody warns you about until you're standing in that line yourself, jet lagged, watching someone else walk past you in thirty seconds while you've still got an hour to go.

None of this requires living in Europe, or even traveling there often. It just requires having the passport. If you think you might have Polish or Romanian ancestry, even a few generations back, I built a quick eligibility quiz that's the fastest way to find out if that's true for you and your family too.

Take the 2-minute eligibility quiz