A bilateral agreement pre-dating the Schengen area may allow 90 days of stay in France regardless of days spent in other Schengen countries.
I am I interpreting this as meaning that if you have spent 3 months in Spain or Portugal on a tourist visa you can go to France nonetheless rather than leave the Schengen area?
Brits and Americans must pay ā¬7 to travel to the EU from 2022 | Euronews
Under the so-called ā90 day ruleā, citizens of these and many other countries are only allowed to spend up to 90 days, in every 180 in the EU. Any longer and they need a visa.
I read the article and I canāt figure out whether it applies to Portuguese golden visa holders. My intuition says no, it wouldnāt apply if youāre entering with a residency card, but thatās a costly mistake if the border guard feels otherwise. Also there could be difficulty with pre-boarding checks. Yay for bureaucracy and vague, cryptic rules.
Logically, i think no. Next time I am talking to my lawyer i can ask them.
I think it goes to the heart of whether you are subject to 90/180 rule as a threshold. For example, a D7 or GV you have already been thoroughly investigated by SEF and allowed to be in country. It would be duplicative to require this additional visa to stay beyond 180 days in my opinion. This logic ends with Portugal, however. I am not sure how other EU countries would view the situation as they may still require ETIAS even if Portugal does not.
Well, your Portuguese residence permit only gives you schengen travel rights to other countries. So really you could say that it doesnāt change anything at all.
It will be interesting to see how this plays though. What if you fly into Lisbon via Amsterdam? Schengen first-point-of-entry check applies, so you need ETIAS just because youāre going through AMS to LIS, whereas if youād gone straight NYC-LIS youād have been fine? But I can fly NYC-LIS, get off the plane, cross the border, then get on a LIS-AMS flight with no checksā¦ unless theyāre now going to institute checks on intra-EU flights? Oh Iām sure thatāll go well.
I think whatās clear at this point is āno one knows yetā. Logically youād think that anyone who has gone through residency permit processing would already be in all the systems and therefore it wouldnāt matter, but I donāt think any of us really understand how all that really works there either.
This is interesting:
As the visa rules for Europe change, there will be several more amendments to the current European Common Visa Policy:
Regular travellers who are trusted by the authorities according to their migration, security and health history, may be offered longer-stay visas from 1 to 3 years.
For whatever that means.
My interpretation of this is that regular tourists would still be subject to 90/180 rule, but would not need to apply for a ETIAS visa each separate visit, as it would be valid for 1-3 years.
This confirms my earlier opinion. Updating post based on newly acquired information:
No, if you have a residency card or residency status in an EU country, you will not need to apply for an ETIAS but will need to travel using your proof of residency and a valid passport.
and this:
No you will not also need an ETIAS. However, your Schengen Visa will still be required for E.U. travel.
Source: ETIAS Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) - ETIAS.COM
But not so fastā¦To make matters more confusing, this seems to contradict the above FAQ:
If you live in an EU member state country, ETIAS may or may not affect you depending on your nationality. Residents in Europe will not be affected by ETIAS in their resident country . However, if they intend to travel to Europe, it may be necessary to obtain an ETIAS.
Source: How Will ETIAS Affect Foreign Residents in European Countries? (etiasvisa.com)
Preliminary conclusions?: I think its likely that if you arrive in your EU country of residence, they will not require the ETIAS. Since Schengen has no internal borders you would not be required to show your EITAS if you after entering your country of residence, later travel through other EU countries. It is more complicated if you arrive first in the EU in a country not your residence. I suspect they are going to want to see your ETIAS.
I had some initial thoughts that led me to dig some more. So.
If you look at EU reg 2018/1240 which is the reg implementing ETIAS, Article 2, you get the following:
This Regulation does not apply to:
(d) holders of residence permits referred to in point 16 of Article 2 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399;
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A02018R1240-20210803&qid=1642732580933
2016/399 is the Schengen Borders Code.
Point 16 of Article 2 of 2016/399 defines it as, AFAICT, uh, well, EU standardized residence permits, subject to EC reg 1030/2002 or Directive 2004/38/EC.
Here is a list of all of the permits registered under article 2(16) of 2016/399 (not from authoritative source but seems accurate):
Portugalās temporary and permanent resident permits are listed.
So I conclude that your GV (or D7) frees you from any ETIAS requirement; you wave your card at the border and walk in. Hopefully it means you get to cut the line in front of all the tourists now getting doubly inspected and looked up, though probably not as youāre still a third-country national and theyāre still required to stamp your passport (also in the Schengen Borders Code).
(It should be interesting to see how long it takes for the airlines to add yet more fields to their systems to capture āAmericans with EU residence permitsāā¦ )
If you think about this, it makes sense. Some other stuff Iāve read basically indicates that there isnāt a ton of control of how third country nationals enter or exit - itās per-country with no real central registry - the Schengen Information System captures āalertsā, or basically negative information, as opposed to tracking every single entry/exit - and not even a heck of a lot of standardized checking. Evidence some other discussions weāve had about overstay and where you exit, lack of uniformity, etc. If someone has a residence permit, you already know who the heck they are, and any residence permit issued according to the standard EC residence permit format as defined in EC reg 1030/2002 has got to mean that it can be looked up in one form or another through EU systems in the same way that an EU passport could - Iām not going looking for chapter/verse on this because it seems self-evident. There is a common EU visa registry as well - the uninterestingly-named Visa Information System (VIS) - so any EU border agent can look up a Schengen Visa and know its specific terms. ETIAS itself is meant to feed a new EU-wide Common Identity Repository (CIS) - indeed, ETIAS appears to be the last piece of it. So why would you make anyone already in an existing EU-wide information system subject to ETIAS, creating a dup record?
I suspect the fudge wording in that section of the web page is just that, room for fudge. There are no doubt edge cases where someone is a āresidentā but doesnāt actually have a residence permit, or has a temporary documentā¦ and what do they mean by āEuropean countriesā? One can be a resident of a European country without being a member of Schengen or having reg 1030/2002 apply your permit. Like, say, third-party-national residents of Bulgaria, whose residence permits do not feature in the above list
I think I also get here why they are so specific on the point that ETIAS is not a visa. Visas have a certain standing and role within the framework of Schengen, and they donāt want to just hand out visas to everyone.
As an aside, Schengen itself is potentially getting tweaked again - itās hard to say if it means anything really.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM%3A2021%3A891%3AFIN&qid=1639757139340
Hello , thank you Jeff, for an excelent explanation and research. This clarifies all doubts in this matter.
This seems definitive.
ETIAS will work hand in hand with EES (entry exit system). My best guess is that this is a precursor to a completely digital passport of the future using some system such as blockchain to reduce fraud and improve security.
Even the airlines will be required to use ETIAS and EES to ensure anyone boarding is prescreened and has not overstayed their visa limits (e.g., number of entries permitted under their visa class).
Letās hope that the airlines test this enough to know to add all these exemptions to ETIAS. There are tens of thousands of foreigners with EU residence permits so this issue will come up sooner than later.
this is not an authoritative source, but could be helpful:
No, if you have a residency card or residency status in an EU country, you will not need to apply for an ETIAS but will need to travel using your proof of residency and a valid passport.
Readers with a Schengen visa should look at one of the last questions: Do I also need an ETIAS if I have a Schengen visa?
Those with a long term EU residence visa should look at: Do I need an ETIAS visa if I already have a long-term visa from one of the Member States?
The answer for both is āNoā, but proof of residency is required.