Once you have your Portuguese residents card is time in Portugal counted in the 90/180 Schengen zone limit? For example, if I have spent the last 90 or more days in Portugal may I travel in other Schengen zone countries for an additional 90 days? Thanks!
If you have a residence card from Portugal, your residence in Portugal is not subject to 90/180days rule as you are a resident. tHe rule is only applicable to visitors.
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Thanks Myakira!
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You can spend 90/180 days in each EU country which is not Portugal, but there is no overall limit for Schengen zone, because you can live in Portugal and travel freely.
With PT residence you could only remain in the Schengen zone for more than 180 days if that time was spent in Portugal, alternatively you could leave the Zone for 180 days.
Itâs late to reply to this post but it might help others investigate their options.
If you have residency in PT you can stay as long as you like in PT. The 90/180 Schengen rule doesnât apply to you in PT. And it doesnât subtract any days from your 90/180 Schengen allotment.
But the Schengen 90/180 rule still applies in any and all other Schengen countries outside of PT. It is NOT 90/180 in each Schengen country but a TOTAL of 90/180 across any and all Schengen countries which include non- EU countries like Norway, Iceland and Switzerland.
Also you should verify that more than 90 days doesnât occur within any ROLLING 180 day period. It is not 90 days in Jan-June and another 90 days July - Dec (say, allowing you to stay April-Sept). Thereâs a special Schengen calculator for this.
Itâs only citizenship that removes the 90/180 rule but then of course you need to take care the you donât accidentally become a tax resident of another EU country by staying more than 183 days in that country.
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FWIW, I did a search on schengen 90/180 rule and came across this stay calculator
Iâm not 100% sure I believe it though, as if I put in a stay that runs 1 Jan - 30 Mar, that uses up 90 days. Ok, that makes sense. But then I add a second trip starting 1 July to 31 July. It tells me I used 88 of 90 in the past 180 days. Ok, yes, the past 180 days ran 1 Feb to 31 July. So, the use of 88 makes sense. But then on the last day to stay, it tells me 27 Sept. That I donât get. I would think it would be 1 Aug or thereabouts.
Am I reading this right?
On 1 Aug you would be +2 days of your âcurrentâ stay but -2 days on your previous stay as it will be counted from 3 Feb. Makes sense?
Try this Schengen calculator from the EUâs site. I have found the process of figuring this out with pencil and paper not very feasible. Maybe someone has a formula for doing this?
Tommy is - as far as understand - giving the right answer. For each day that goes by a day of the prior 180 days ages out allowing an additional day to be added to your next stay. I donât think I am writing this exactly right but that is the meaning of the rolling 180 days.
It was far easier when the rule was 90 days in each 180 days meaning you could understand how long you could stay without the need of any calculators and puzzlement over its result.
No, alas it doesnât. But Iâll bang my head against this another day. At least the two calculators (the one I referenced and the one posted by @djeker) agree.
Iâd be careful trusting those online calculators 100% too. Youâre right that figuring it out by hand can be tricky. When in doubt, Iâd probably err on the side of staying under 90 days just to be safe.
It is confusing how the days are counted rolling backwards like that. When are you planning your next trip to the Schengen area? Just staying within Portugal or venturing elsewhere too? Always good to plan extra buffer time in case of travel delays or wanting to extend a trip.
Picking up on this⊠Nomad Gate PT GV Guide states visa free access to Schengen. The EU says otherwise
To be fair, itâs the details that matter here. It appears there is visa free access, but still subject to the 90/180 Schengen rule when outside your home country. IE Iâm still a tourist as far as non-host countries are concerned.
Plus, do I assume correctly that the 90/180 rule applies to the sum of stays in all non-host countries? IE, PT is my host country. But I go to France for 60 days, and then immediately to Germany for 60 days before returning to PT. While each of the stays is less than 90, the overall is greater than 90, and Iâm in dutch with Schengen. Right?
Thatâs how I understand the regulations, yes. 90 days out of every rolling 180 can be spent in any and all EU country other than Portugal, however on day 91 youâre over your limit and have to either return to Portugal or leave the EU. It doesnât matter if that 90 is all in one country or if you went for 9 days to 10 countries, the effect is the same. Only Portugal doesnât count against this clock.
Also take note of the possible consequences of going over your 90/180*⊠including future grief entering the Schengen area:
*either by Schengen visa or the permitted 90 days for nationals of the countries under the visa-waiver program
Like many GV applicants, I have been waiting for over two years for my first residence permit . I have lived in Portugal since March of 2022 , had my biometric appointment in January of 2023, and have been unable to travel to other Schengen countries due to the 90 day limit. Given the 400,000 visa application backlog at AIMA , and my unwillingness to move from my Portuguese home for 180 days, the question is: is there any work around? As a US citizen, can I apply for a Schengen visa? I have had to turn down offers for short term contract work and cannot provide the kinds of tours I provided in the past due to my inability to travel.
The promise of offering a Golden Visa in 6 months was certainly misleading, and living in limbo without status is problematic on many levels. If someone has a suggestion for an alternate way to access the rest of the Schengen zone while we wait and wait for AIMA, I would be grateful.
Can you afford to just give up and leave and start over and do something else and just wait for the residence permit to show up someday whenever it does? Cutting your losses is sometimes necessary.
A Schengen visa is specifically for stays of no more than 90 days. Longer validities are basically just a multiple-entry visa. So I donât think itâs solving your problem since as a US citizen you already essentially have a multiple-entry visa. And it doesnât solve the âright to workâ problem, which a Schengen visa never allowed in the first place.
What, exactly, is the problem you are trying to solve? Itâs unclear at best.
What do I want? I want to be able to travel in the Schengen zone both for personal travel and to continue leading wine and culture tours in Portugal,France and Spain.; something I cant do since I have no recognized legal status in Europe other than preliminary approval of a Portuguese GV application. This is only recognized by Portugal, but even in Portugal is not enough to allow me to drive legally since I do not qualify for a Portuguese driving license without a residence card; and as far as other Schengen countries are concerned, I have long overstayed my time in the Schengen zone and may not travel there .
I thought about returning to the US and starting again with a D7- but that means losing almost three years that currently counts toward the 5 year residence requirement toward Portuguese citizenship. I am 76 years old. I want to live long enough to earn a Portuguese passport, so that isnât a reasonable option for me.
I applied for a GV when no D7 applications were being accepted or processed due to Covid. Portugese regulations promised reasonable processing times for golden visa approval. That promise was not honored, and we are caught in limbo with no way to travel or regularize our status. If Portugal allowed switching visa application from GV to D7 without losing time in country credit, that would go along way to solving a huge problem for applicants already living in Portugal.
So, I think the disconnect here is that even if you did have the residence permit, it doesnât actually give you what you ask for entirely. When it comes to going to countries other than Portugal, Schengen rules still apply. Namely, you canât work in other countries, and you canât just go spend > 90/180 in them. De facto it is poorly policed, but the rule is the same.
I suppose the difficulty is that if you donât have the permit, you donât get the same benefit of the doubt, and that stamp in your passport gets to be damning. Understood that you are likely actually not > 90/180 if you subtract off the time in PT, the issue being how you prove it one way or the other if asked.
I doubt youâd get a schengen visa because youâre from a waiver country and so it wouldnât change anything.
You could apply for a visa of some sort from another country. The EU permit tracking system is not the same as the EU visa tracking system, and in any event what one country does doesnât show up in another countryâs records and nothing shows up in either system at the EU level until itâs actually completed. It isnât as if PT looks at your passport again unless youâre just on pre-approval, either; they copy it once and thatâs that. (Simply donât offer it as proof of time-in-country at renewal time. It wouldnât be helpful anyway, right?) And really, saying âI want to work in Franceâ isnât the same as âI want to live in PTâ. Even a PT citizen would have to apply for right to work in another Schengen country. Which must happen all the time given how many cities are next to each other along the PT/ES border. It might be default and automatic, but there is still a paper process. In the case, you would just be doing The Right Thing, and who can fault you for that?
And the moment you have another visa, then you just plan your travel to create stamps appropriately based on THAT visa to reset the apparent clock. Annoying but ryanair flights to the UK are cheap and in this case Brexit actually helps you since it gives you somewhere nearby to go. (Leave ES. Enter PT. PT wonât argue entering PT. ES shows FR you left. Canât prove how long you were in either. Have to give benefit of doubt. Something like this. Iâm not giving this enough thought but Iâm sure you can conjure something.)
Iâm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but it seems worth pursuing.
" It isnât as if PT looks at your passport again unless youâre just on pre-approval, either"
I am just on pre-approval. That is the issue. I have been on pre-approval for more than 2 years. When I return to Portugal after a short visit to the US,(which I am able to do) AIMA checks all of my paperwork (passport, stamps, SEF pre-approval, notice of appointment for biometrics) to certify that I may re-enter Portugal.
Without a residence permit, the time spent in Portugal counts as presence in the Schengen zone. Only after you have a residence permit is the time in Portugal not counted toward the 90/180 days in the zone. I have overstayed my Schengen visa by two years, and while Portugal recognizes their extension of the temporary stay visa, the Schengen zone does not and I cannot enter other Schengen countries until I have a Portuguese residence card, or until I leave the Schengen zone (including leaving Portugal) for 90 days. I could not responsibly take the risk of entering the zone leading a group tour if there were any possibility of a passport check. While they donât happen often, they do happen.
I can happily comply with the 90 out of any 180 day limit by limiting the number of tours to one per quarter, but without a residence card, the amount of time I can spend in other Schengen countries is zero. Because I have a company in the US and my customers were Americans, the ruling I was given is that leading tours to the Schengen zone was not an issue as long as I did not stay in the Schengen for more than 90 days out of 180 days, and the income was considered US income. No work permit from destination countries was needed. But of course since I now live in Portugal, and I am a Portuguese tax resident and registered with Finanças for self employment in Portugal, I could continue to lead tours in other Schengen countries once I had a residence card in Portugal as time in Portugal doesnât count toward the 90 days. The income would be treated as Portuguese income as the work is managed and the tours sold while I am based in Portugal. Again, no work permit for other countries is needed.
I want to thank you for taking the time to brainstorm a potential work-around, but it may be that I only have two choices: forget about traveling to other Schengen countries until AIMA mails me my residence card, or leave the Schengen zone (including Portugal) for 90 days. After that I could travel to the Schengen as an American; but after 90 days, unless AIMA sends me a residence card, I will once again be unable to travel.
Hm. yeah thatâs a tough one. Esp with the tax consequences.
I agree, no matter what you have to leave schengen for 90 days to reset the clock. However, if you could get another TYPE of visa (non-schengen) from another country, something that doesnât hold you to the 90/180 rule for that country⊠then you have two different visas for two different countries, and you can start playing games there.
Whether you need the visa or not for work purposes based on your ruling is irrelevant. The point would be to get one anyway using your work as an excuse.
I didnât say it was easy. You already know that of course. Iâm just looking for a loophole.