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90/180 rule for UK citizens

Discuss your questions about the EU and Brexit and what it means for Quesada and Spain

Re: 90/180 rule for UK citizens

Postby cooper67 » Tue Oct 12, 2021 1:18 pm

changed my flights today checked that it was 63 day we were out for in summer and i boked flights from 31 october to 27 november it would have taken us to 91 days so now we are flying back on thursday the 25 better to be safe than take a chance all be it was 1 day over
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Re: 90/180 rule for UK citizens

Postby Darro » Tue Oct 12, 2021 3:42 pm

DesW wrote:On entry on 1st October passport was stamped but not scanned.....
Be surprised if not, more likely it was but you didn't actually see it.

In any case the stamp stands as your date of entry and will be examined at the point of exit and if the stay exceeds 90 days then expect consequences.
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Re: 90/180 rule for UK citizens

Postby PGA » Tue Oct 12, 2021 4:39 pm

Darro wrote:
DesW wrote:On entry on 1st October passport was stamped but not scanned.....
Be surprised if not, more likely it was but you didn't actually see it.

In any case the stamp stands as your date of entry and will be examined at the point of exit and if the stay exceeds 90 days then expect consequences.



I presume it will have to be scanned. The threads on here show how calculation is causing some difficulties. Even with border guards well versed in the rules, for any passenger travelling regularly within the EU, the rolling 180 days and the 90 days therein will require quite a time consuming exercise per passenger if they are wading through 30 or so stamps over that 180 day period, or indeed even establishing what the "opening" date of that 180 days is.

It is fairly easy to see a "straight" 90 days from a passport stamp to see if it exceeds or not. However, if the 90 days is taken over 10 trips, and then the next 180 days then start it would be a nightmare for anyone to try and calculate from a well-stamped passport what allowance has been used.
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Re: 90/180 rule for UK citizens

Postby Paul58 » Tue Oct 12, 2021 7:23 pm

PGA wrote:
Darro wrote:
DesW wrote:On entry on 1st October passport was stamped but not scanned.....
Be surprised if not, more likely it was but you didn't actually see it.

In any case the stamp stands as your date of entry and will be examined at the point of exit and if the stay exceeds 90 days then expect consequences.



I presume it will have to be scanned. The threads on here show how calculation is causing some difficulties. Even with border guards well versed in the rules, for any passenger travelling regularly within the EU, the rolling 180 days and the 90 days therein will require quite a time consuming exercise per passenger if they are wading through 30 or so stamps over that 180 day period, or indeed even establishing what the "opening" date of that 180 days is.

It is fairly easy to see a "straight" 90 days from a passport stamp to see if it exceeds or not. However, if the 90 days is taken over 10 trips, and then the next 180 days then start it would be a nightmare for anyone to try and calculate from a well-stamped passport what allowance has been used.



I wouldn't worry too much. There's no way the border force are going to manually calculate the dates for each passenger and that's the only way they can do do it at the moment.

Yes your passports are scanned and yes they are sometimes checked against a national database to see if you are a person of interest but this system does not calculate whether you have spent 91 days in Spain and alert the border officer.

ETIAS may change this, if ever they get it working, currently due at the end of 2022.
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Re: 90/180 rule for UK citizens

Postby Paul Uden » Tue Oct 12, 2021 7:46 pm

Interesting comments suggesting Spain / EU has no way of realistically checking lengths of stay. Pre-Covid Spain was typically turning away around 200,000 non-EU travellers at its borders every year. Across the EU as a whole 7.5% of these were because they had previously overstayed their 90 day allowance meaning, if Spain was similar, around 15,000 being turned away at Spanish borders for this reason each year. I too have no idea how they check, but the rules have been around for a some years so I'd be surprised if they don't or can't, even if it's only random spotchecks. I still don't think it's worth the risk if you intend to travel regularly to a second home in the future.
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Re: 90/180 rule for UK citizens

Postby Paul58 » Tue Oct 12, 2021 8:26 pm

Paul Uden wrote:Interesting comments suggesting Spain / EU has no way of realistically checking lengths of stay. Pre-Covid Spain was typically turning away around 200,000 non-EU travellers at its borders every year. Across the EU as a whole 7.5% of these were because they had previously overstayed their 90 day allowance meaning, if Spain was similar, around 15,000 being turned away at Spanish borders for this reason each year. I too have no idea how they check, but the rules have been around for a some years so I'd be surprised if they don't or can't, even if it's only random spotchecks. I still don't think it's worth the risk if you intend to travel regularly to a second home in the future.



Good point but I suspect that a number of these "overstayers" were people that required a specific visa to enter the Schengen area. UK travelers don't (currently) require a visa to enter the Shengen area and are only subjected to a stamp in their passports.

Take a look at ETIAS. It's what the EU are hoping to get working in the next few years or so. I wish them luck but looking at the balls up the UK made of the NHS system (and others)... and that was operating within the same country. It's going to take some time before it's up & running.

https://www.etiasvisa.com/

Don't get me wrong, I'm not condoning overstaying, it's just that the automatic checks aren't in place yet.
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Re: 90/180 rule for UK citizens

Postby Paul Uden » Tue Oct 12, 2021 8:35 pm

Paul58 wrote:
Paul Uden wrote:Interesting comments suggesting Spain / EU has no way of realistically checking lengths of stay. Pre-Covid Spain was typically turning away around 200,000 non-EU travellers at its borders every year. Across the EU as a whole 7.5% of these were because they had previously overstayed their 90 day allowance meaning, if Spain was similar, around 15,000 being turned away at Spanish borders for this reason each year. I too have no idea how they check, but the rules have been around for a some years so I'd be surprised if they don't or can't, even if it's only random spotchecks. I still don't think it's worth the risk if you intend to travel regularly to a second home in the future.



Good point but I suspect that a number of these "overstayers" were people that required a specific visa to enter the Schengen area. UK travelers don't (currently) require a visa to enter the Shengen area and are only subjected to a stamp in their passports.

Take a look at ETIAS. It's what the EU are hoping to get working in the next few years or so. I wish them luck but looking at the balls up the UK made of the NHS system (and others)... and that was operating within the same country. It's going to take some time before it's up & running.

https://www.etiasvisa.com/

Don't get me wrong, I'm not condoning overstaying, it's just that the automatic checks aren't in place yet.


Thanks. That is useful information. Obviously historic stats don't include Brits so it will be interesting to see what happens going forward and whether the EU continues to 'turn a blind eye' or takes a closer look.
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Re: 90/180 rule for UK citizens

Postby PGA » Tue Oct 12, 2021 10:12 pm

I agree with you both and not worth taking the risk; but just the logistics for checking regular EU tourists without some electronic log would be akin to one of these maths question/riddles that get touted around.

As I likely will be once Covid is behind us, I will probably be in an out of the EU once or twice a month for a mix of work and pleasure. Trying to decipher entry and exit dates coupled with when my 180 days started and then rolled into the next one would be an absolute muddle.

If there wasn't the apps to help me log every day it would be bad enough for me to track my own allowances, let alone a border guard handed a passport with umpteen stamps in and out of not just Spain, but all parts of the EU, then discard the stamps for non-EU destinations, all while a group of other non-EU passport holders queue behind....hmmm.

As I say, easy for a 90 day straight stayer to do the maths, but someone in and out all the time would probably take me 15 - 20 mins with a diary and a notepad! The threat of a spot check for those who do frequent the EU (and anywhere other than their resident nation to be fair) would probably be enough for 99% to self-police their EU allowance, but as for being able to monitor it by stamps alone, would be a hell of a task.
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Re: 90/180 rule for UK citizens

Postby Paul Uden » Fri Oct 22, 2021 7:35 am

This is the first publicised case I've seen of a UK citizen being refused entry to Spain, due to not having an exit stamp in their passport the last time they visited and therefore assumed to have overstayed:

https://www.thelocal.es/20211021/briton ... ort-stamp/
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Re: 90/180 rule for UK citizens

Postby Redwoodsman » Fri Oct 22, 2021 7:55 am

Paul (with thanks)
That link seemed blocked to non subscribers

I had seen this:
(and I wonder if is partly the Gibraltar issue)

To all those asking about overstaying the 90 days this was posted by Spectrum FM
Briton denied entry to Spain over missing passport stamp
A UK national whose passport was not stamped by Spanish border officials has been denied entry when attempting to return to the country, highlighting the new issue of passport stamps for Brits travelling to the Schengen Area post-Brexit.
British citizen Linda Pretl reached out to The Local Spain to explain how she had recently been prevented from entering Spain from Gibraltar by border officials who suspected she had exhausted her 90 out 180 days in Spain and the Schengen Area.
The reason for refusal? Pretl’s passport didn’t have a stamp showing that she had indeed left Spain and abided by the new rules for non-resident British visitors in Spain since Brexit came into force in 2021.
“I was denied entry to Spain on September 26th due to my passport not being stamped on exit on a previous one-week visit to Spain which started on June 4th,” Pretl told The Local.
“The guards initially stamped my passport to enter then noticed I had no exit stamp from that one-week visit in June, thereby classing me as an overstayer and subsequently marked the entry stamp with the letter f and two lines.
“Even though I have proof of returning to the UK via banking activity as well as the test and trace COVID app, the border guards would not accept or look at any proof nor let me speak to anyone that could help”.

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