I'm rather reluctant to admit this, but I've flown to CDG at least once a year for the past 10 years (from Miami on American) and have never had trouble or delay with security at CDG. And getting through immigration on arrival has always been extremely fast. My one bad experience was trying to find an Air France connection flight (after arriving on American).
Impossible! After that, I decided I would only
"connect" to anyplace from CDG via the train! Maybe it wouldn't be so bad with a same airline connection. But I don't intend to find out.

One more addition--I have just quizzed the family. I don't ever recall having to have stickies from the US to Europe portion.

I do remember being able to print boarding passes (USAirways) beforehand but then being turned away trying to get to our gate (again, only with carry-on luggage) because we had not yet checked in with a gate agent. This was in Venice. They then did the "stickies" drill.

Next thrill thread--Fav entry points to US. Guess what I'm NOT going to elect? You guessed it, I know you did, yes, I know you did--PHL, PA. But I'll put that in the Lounge forum.

Suze: Arrival is a snap at CDG. I can't recall one delay ever. Our line was just a tad longer than usual this time, but that was first week of July (heavy incoming volume) during an early shift change. Totally understandable. Once the people were in place, no problem whatsoever.

Getting to a taxi is simple there too.

We have decided that we will NEVER, under any circumstances, fly through CDG again. That airport is a disaster. I won't go into the details of multiple miserable trips through there. And then there was the terminal that collapsed.

All this explains why we happily fly home from Nice via Heathrow.

Better get those snowballs ready! It took us 15 minutes to go from check-in to being wanded (I had a lovely massage-y pat-down from a female guard who said "Merci, madame" at its conclusion to bums in the seats in the waiting room. Mind you, this was CDG's teminal 3, not the main one.

On another departure from the main CDG terminal, I was asked to show my passport 6 times and was confronted by a wild-eyed security guy who put his face 2 inches from mine and demanded to know if I were carrying liquids. Weird AND inconsistent!

an experience after LANDING at CGD :
July 5th this year at 9:30 AM. :
several flights must have landed at the same time. Hundreds of people were lining up to go through the passport control - there were only 4 officers processing tired,, sleep deprived masses. Took 35 minutes to get through..
I was never so glad I travel with carry on only so I could just get out of that miserable building.

I believe that the stickies are just for checked baggage.

There was a time, quite a few years ago that stickies were put on carry-on baggage also, but since quite some time, i do not remember stickies on carry-ons.

And, security has never checked stickies as far back as i remember. Just the airline at check-in.

How much time you spend at arrivals-to-boarding depends on the time, the persons who confront you, and the systems and procedures at that specific airport.

Arrivals can be as bad. We had to wait two and a half hours for our baggage at OHare because the cargo doors of our plane were frozen and could not be opened, a couple of years ago. Or seven large planes could have landed just a few minutes before yours did. Apparently the job descriptions of passport control officers at ports of entry of any country do not include, "to process as many people as fast as possible without impairing security."

The smaller the airport, the less the hassle. For example, flying from Stansted instead of Heathrow seems to be worth the longer transfer time and higher cost (train not taxi)

I am continually amazed that people are surprised that flying in and out of the biggest airports in the world is more complicated and less pleasant than a local airport. Dealing with 100 nationalities flying to 200 destinations in 85 countries is not the same as flying from Tulsa to Minneapolis, especially when each airline and various countries have different security regulations. They do not employ rocket scientists at security, so inconsistencies are normal.

Just to clarify:

The extended security interview is required only for US carriers departing for the US. European carriers do not have a similar requirement. If you are flying Delta from CDG to MSP, then you will have an extended interview and will get a sticker to signify that it has been conducted. If you are flying Air France from CDG to IAD, then you will not have the extended interview and will not receive the sticker.

I agree that things can happen, but there is also a lot of room for preparing yourself and many of the problems people face are avoidable.

Am I the only with the bragging rights to be checked for explosives in Copenhagen?

They took something looking like a piece of white paper, rubbed it against my hands, both sides, after that the same paper "traveled" on both sides of my purse and along the long strap.

And I had to take the shoes off at the boarding gate. And they x-rayed my metal mint box separately - maybe this what caused all trouble?

My husband just walked through, the nerve

My husband and I traveled to Greece last year and our passports had to go through the X-ray machine at Athens airport.