Some posts moved here from the UK GAR thread
Interesting info, @LFHNflightstudent. I suppose that is how it is supposed to work, and I expected the EU to do the same for UK pilots visiting, but clearly UK BF didn’t bother in past years, with GA passengers. The EU also clearly don’t always bother doing it for Brits.
I wonder if you are flying a bizjet or similar? I would expect those to be watched a lot more carefully, with the Ukraine / Russian sanctions business going on.
Does anyone know if the passport checking machines (which are clearly linked to some database) are also used to record residence periods?
Peter wrote:
Does anyone know if the passport checking machines (which are clearly linked to some database) are also used to record residence periods?
In commercial airports they are. I have witnessed (literally the person in front of me) in Geneva being blocked and taken out of the line for over staying her Schengen Visa. Non-EU but Schengen, it is the way the Schengen Zone is supposed to operate.
taken out of the line for over staying her Schengen Visa
Given that exiting Switzerland via “GA” (which for anybody with a lot of money means a bizjet) would have avoided that issue, that may explain why UK BF looks at that sort of traffic more carefully, especially now. If I was in that situation I would leave Switzerland in, shall we say, a different way 
Peter wrote:
If I was in that situation I would leave Switzerland in, shall we say, a different way
Sure, but if you were planning to ever come back (remember you will have legally over stayed your allowed 90 days for every 180 days running) you would not be allowed to. This is not a Switzerland over stay but an entire Schengen over stay… you can bank on a stiff fine and entry restriction or expulsion (more likely)
That’s the theory but it can’t be quite like that, because it is dead easy to leave schengen/eu for the UK without seeing a police officer.
Dead easy to do at La Rochelle for example (despite this) where (as already reported here) there is nobody to see you. Nobody on the way in and nobody on the way out.
We did that e.g. here pretty exhaustively. It comes back to the debate on whether you are required to seek out the police. The PN systems implies NO, but the schengen border procedure implies YES.
So a lot of UK pilots should get arrested upon re-entry.
Perhaps the hazardous procedure is to enter, but not exit with a stamp but even so this will happen frequently and they cannot arrest everybody.
I reckon this hazard exists at airline airports, where, as already reported, they keep track of your stay. The passport scanners feed into the database keeping track of how long you stay. That, in turn, is why you cannot cross the schengen border at big airports without a police check (generally; actually you can at quite a few if you go into the wrong queue).
This is not at all related to the UK GAR, however. Let’s keep this to the UK GAR (or UK border police procedures) topic, please.
Peter wrote:
Perhaps the hazardous procedure is to enter, but not exit with a stamp but even so this will happen frequently and they cannot arrest everybody.
It is not about arresting people, (per se though legally you could be arrested) but your entry visa for the Schengen area will be revoked if they do find you have overstayed meaning you will be denied entry going forward. It is your obligation as a third party national to know the law and make sure you do get the entry and exit stamp so you can prove this. You may not want to believe that but it is part of the Schengen entry requirements (which are non-aviation specific) … These are enshrined since 2016 in EU law and supersede national law —>
Travel Documents and Entry Requirements for non-EU Nationals
You will have to present several documents at the Schengen port of entry, in order to be permitted to enter, if you are a non-EU/Schengen country national, regardless if you are a visa-exempt or not.
The documents you need to provide when entering the Schengen Area are as follows:
Valid Passport. Issued within the previous 10 years and valid for at least 3 months after the date you intend to leave the EU.
Schengen Visa. If you are a national of one of the third countries in need of a visa.
EU/Schengen border officials may also ask for other information and documents such as sufficient funds, proof of accommodation, how long you intend to stay, round-trip airline ticket, the purpose of your entry, travel insurance, invitation letter, etc.
Please, make sure that the border officer gives you an entry stamp in your passport when you enter the Schengen area. Without a stamp, you could be fined or detained.
The above is valid until May 2023 when ETIAS will come into force for travellers to the EU/Schengen from 63 third countries for which Schengen pre-agreements exist for Visa free entry. The Schengen countries have granted the UK this VISA exemption.
ETIAS stands for European Travel Information and Authorization System. It is a completely electronic system that allows and keeps track of visitors from countries who do not need a visa to enter the Schengen Zone. In a way, it resembles the U.S Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), which serves a similar purpose.
The ETIAS will undergo a detailed security check of each applicant to determine whether they can be allowed to enter any Schengen Zone country. While citizens of countries who do not need a visa for travel purposes of up to 90 days in the EU do not need to go through a long process of applying for the visa, the ETIAS will make sure that these people are not a security threat. This travel authorization system will gather, keep track of, and update necessary information regarding visitors to determine whether it is safe for them to enter Schengen countries. The ETIAS, besides being used for business and tourist purposes, will also allow people to visit the Schengen countries for medical and transit reasons. In addition, it will be mandatory for all countries that are Schengen visa-free. The ‘scanners’ for passports that are frequently mentioned here in Airports in the north of France will serve this purpose and the ETIAS compliance check will be integrated in those as well as the tracking of the amount of days spent within the Schengen area.
These are the European countries that will require a valid ETIAS upon arrival at their borders:
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Those who want to get approval will have to follow these steps to apply for ETIAS:
The ETIAS application is expected to take about 10 minutes to fill out. (It looks like it will be a lot more from what follows ;-) It will be online so you will not have to go through paperwork. Depending on the country of citizenship that you choose, it will present you with several fields to fill. You must give the following information:
Biometric information such as:
First name
Last name
Last name at birth
Date of birth
Place of birth
Information regarding your citizenship
Address
Email and phone number
Education and work experience
First EU country you intend to visit
Background and eligibility questions will inquire about your medical condition, travel to war countries or places where you were deported or rejected, as well as criminal records
For minors, the legal guardian must apply for ETIAS
For family members of EU citizens from other countries, you must submit proof of relationship, residence card, and other background information
Submitting the application
When you complete the application, you will have to pay the fee and submit it. The system will do the following:
Check if the information you gave was correct
Check your eligibility
Check your risk factors
If what you filled out on the application form is correct, and you are eligible and not risky for the ETIAS, then you will be approved. This whole procedure is expected to be completed in only a few minutes.
However, if there is a hit from the ETIAS, the application will be manually processed. The manual processing is expected to take about 96 hours (4 days), or a maximum of 2 weeks.
Specifically for travel from GB (and if you are a double passport holder)
Will British citizens be required to have the ETIAS authorization?
All UK nationals will need to apply for ETIAS travel authorization by May 2023 when the scheme becomes fully operational.
UK residents who are passport holders of one of the countries with which the EU has a visa regime in place are not eligible to apply for an ETIAS despite their residency in Britain. They will instead have to apply for a regular Schengen visa.
How many times can I enter the EU with an ETIAS?
You can enter the Schengen member states as many times as you want, for as long as your ETIAS is valid, and you have not stayed more than 90 days in a 180 day period. Beware that you DO NEED TO DECLARE which country you will be entering the EU/Schengen in on EVERY OCCASION
Maybe instead of copy/pasting from a website, you could just link to it.
Especially when it is only a private website and not authoritative.
I suspect some of the text above is driven by marketing.
Xtophe wrote:
Maybe instead of copy/pasting from a website, you could just link to it.
Especially when it is only a private website and not authoritative.
I suspect some of the text above is driven by marketing.
I did indeed copy from a website but if you prefer the full legal text without what will happen as of may the EU is very diligent in publishing it’s regulation before it becomes law – the relevant legal document from 2016 is here —> https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32016R0399&qid=1635355763466
Please do highlight if anything I have posted is factually incorrect or ’’marketing’’ as you have us believe…
LFHNflightstudent wrote:
Please do highlight if anything I have posted is factually incorrect
LFHNflightstudent wrote:
It is your obligation as a third party national to know the law and make sure you do get the entry and exit stamp so you can prove this
Technically, YES but Schengen Border Code (yes I have read all of it, one has to do something boring when holding a baby to sleep 
) has allowances for missing passport stamps for third-country nationals, the presumption of overstay comes from Articles 11 of Reg EU 562/2006 but leave the burden on the person to prove they have not overstayed (say they had doctor attestation from Glagow?)
You can also read this in the report from EU commission to EU parliament on operation of the provisions on stamping of the travel documents, see COM/2009/0489
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52009DC0489&from=EN
If you have gathered enough evidences, you can use the form in Annex VIII of SBC, fill it up and hand to C+I to sign and keep, voila !
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0399#d1e34-48-1
LFHNflightstudent wrote:
’’marketing’’ as you have us believe…
From https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/terms-conditions/ in the “Affiliate Disclosure” section:
Some of the external links […] are affiliate links, meaning that should you click on a link and subsequently purchase a product from that website, we may receive a commission
Which possibly range from “we get a bit of money in exchange to reading the boring legal texts” to “we use our good google ranking to send you to websites with huge mark-up rather than the official/cheap ones and we get a back-commission for it”
