Passengers arriving and departing from Terminal 1 at Paris’s main Charles de Gaulle airport on Monday morning reported queues of up to an hour to pass through passport control checks.

Several passengers tweeted that there were just two border control agents on duty to process departing passengers.

Bosses at Aéroports de Paris, which runs Paris Orly and Charles de Gaulle airports, acknowledged that there had been problems, and said they were caused by a shortage of border control agents, adding that queues had cleared by lunchtime.

An airport spokesman told French broadcaster BFM TV: “Monday was a big day, with over 200,000 passengers expected at Paris-Charles de Gaulle. At Terminal 1, the wait this morning exceeded 60 minutes at departure due to a strong influx of passengers and a strain on border police staff in the sector. The other sectors of Paris-CDG were well supplied and did not experience high waiting times.”

The lack of border agents is a recurring problem at France’s busiest airport. A lack of French border control agents has also been blamed for long queues seen at peak departure periods from the British port of Dover – although longer immigration processes since Brexit are also a major factor.

The French Police aux Frontières said that they had almost 300 staff vacancies at the end of 2022, and have begun a major recruitment process.

It plans to recruit 255 additional agents for the Paris airports by June and 500 before the end of 2024.

In addition to the usual summer holiday traffic and the Rugby World Cup in September and October this year, airport authorities are also looking ahead to the huge visitor numbers expected during the Paris Olympics and Paralympics in 2024.