How to ask for your EES record (Article 52)

Write to the authority responsible for EES data in any country that uses the EES. Ask for a copy of your EES data and, if something is wrong, for it to be corrected. Include the minimum information needed to identify you. The authority must reply within 45 days of receiving your request. The EES Regulation sets no form and no fee, and the EU's data protection rules, which the request is made under, say it's free unless it's manifestly unfounded or excessive.

What Article 52 gives you

Article 52 of Regulation (EU) 2017/2226 applies your data protection rights to the EES. You can ask for:

• Access: a copy of the data the EES holds about you, which includes the date and place of each entry and exit.
• Rectification or completion: a wrong or missing record put right, for example an exit that was never recorded.
• Erasure: data recorded unlawfully removed.
• Restriction: a limit on how data you dispute are used while the authority checks whether they're accurate.

This is the only way to see the individual records. The official online check shows how many days you have left, but not why.

Who to ask

You can send the request to the competent authority of any member state, not only the one that made the record. The EU's EES site suggests starting with the countries you traveled to, and publishes a contact page for all 29 countries (opens in a new tab) with three kinds of contact for each:

• The data controller: the authority that handles requests to access or correct your data. Send your request here.
• The data protection officer: can help you use your rights, but doesn't replace the controller.
• The supervisory authority: the national data protection authority, for complaints.

If you ask a country that didn't make the record to correct it, that country checks the data within 30 days if it can do so alone. Otherwise it contacts the responsible country within 7 days, and that country checks within 30 days of being contacted.

What to include

1. Who you are. The Regulation asks for "the minimum information necessary to identify" you. In practice that usually means your full name, date of birth, nationality and passport details, with a copy of your passport's data page. Check the authority's own guidance, since some publish a form.
2. What you want: a copy of your individual file and all your entry and exit records, and, if something's wrong, its correction.
3. For a correction, each record you dispute: the date, the border crossing point, what the record may show and what actually happened.
4. Copies of your evidence, such as boarding passes, tickets or hotel bills, each labeled so the authority can match it to a record.

The authority can ask for fingerprints only in justified cases where there are substantive doubts about your identity, and the identifying information you give may be used only for your request and must be erased afterward. Send the request in a way that proves the date it arrived, and keep a copy.

What you get back, and when

• A reply within 45 days of the authority receiving your request.
• If it corrects your data: written confirmation, without delay, that it has done so.
• If it disagrees that anything is wrong: a written administrative decision explaining why, and information on how to challenge it, including help from the national data protection authority.

The authority must also keep a written record that you made the request and how it was dealt with. The Regulation doesn't say what format the copy of your data comes in.

Does it cost anything?

The EES Regulation doesn't mention a fee. Requests to national authorities fall under the General Data Protection Regulation, whose Article 12(5) says that actions on access, correction and erasure requests are "free of charge". The exception is a request that is "manifestly unfounded or excessive", for example because it's repeated, where the authority may charge a reasonable fee or refuse.

If there's no answer

The national data protection authority must, on request, help and advise you. You can also bring an action or complaint before the authorities or courts of the country that refused, and that right applies too when a request isn't answered within the deadlines. Our guide on what to do if your EES record is wrong covers the next steps.

The letter MyTravelStatus drafts

On the Plus and Pro plans, when an EES check you've recorded differs from your log, you can prepare an Article 52 request as a PDF. You choose:

• Who it goes to: Germany's Federal Office of Administration (BVA), which also publishes its own form you can send with it, or the data protection or border authority of France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Austria, Greece or Poland. For those, you add the exact address from the authority's official website.
• Which of our possible explanations to put in dispute, such as a missing exit, or no specific record, which asks for a copy of everything.

The letter asks for a copy of your EES data and for any wrong records to be corrected. It states what the EU tool showed and your own figure for that date, lists any disputed records, lists your stays in the 180-day window, and adds an index of any evidence files linked to those trips with their SHA-256 fingerprints. It asks for a reply within 45 days. Your passport number and date of birth are left blank for you to write by hand, because we don't store them. It lists what to enclose rather than claiming anything is enclosed.

Start with your own count in our Schengen calculator, or create a free account to keep a dated record of your trips. For how the EES works in general, see our EES guide.

Not legal advice. This guide explains the published rules as we understand them on the date above. Rules and how they're applied change, and border officers make the final decision. Check the official sources below, and get professional advice for your own situation.