[Neil F]

Like lots of folk of my age, I was planning to spend a lot of my retirement travelling, and I'm pretty dismayed by the restrictions on my freedom to travel to Europe inflicted by my Brexiteer brethren.

However, this thread isn't intended to revisit that old chestnut!

What I am looking to understand, is exactly what the theoretical rules for days Brits can spend in EU countries are.  I'm sceptical, as many are, as to whether these rules would actually be enforced in practise, but I feel I must have a proper grasp of how it is supposed to work, before deciding whether to comply or flout, with whatever consequences may result...

So, as I understand it, we can only spend 90 days out of 180 in EU countries.  And that is a rolling 180 day period.

Can anyone elaborate, or answer these specific questions:-

I've just been lucky enough to spend 21 days in France.

Does my first 180 day period start from day one of that trip (assuming it was effectively my first visit to the EU since we left).

Assuming I get to the end of that 180 day period, and I've only used 77 days of my 90 day allowance (the current plan), is there any way to carry forward that unused 13 day allowance?   (I assume not, but if you don't ask, you don't get  )

Assuming I'm not heading back to the EU on day 181, when does the second 180 day period start?  Can I defer the start of that second period until my first day back in the EU?

Is any of this actually defined anywhere, or is it all just vague, supposedly covered by that single '90 days in 180' limit?

I'm told that currently this is policed by manual checking of passport stamps, so effectively down to whether a particular departing border official feels inclined to rap your knuckles for outstaying your allowance (and presumably thereby earning his country valuable tourist revenue).

I'd probably take a punt on that.

But the system is due to be replaced by a computerised system whereby your passport is scanned and the system automatically calculates any transgression (and presumably the sanction due?), and this is the time when it will be important to properly understand the underlying rules...

Neil

[Paul B]

There have been a few recent threads/posts recently i.e.
https://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,31606.msg648663.html#msg648663

Adam Lincoln posted a recent 'work around' for Spain (if you have 27,500E to hand).

[abarro81]

It's a rolling 180 day period and you can never exceed 90. You can think of it as 365 "blocks" if you want - one starts on 1st Jan, the next 2nd Jan etc. If in any of those periods you exceed 90 days you broke the rules. The easiest way to manage it (though there are no doubt online calculators for this), if you're familiar with Excel, seems to be to build a spreadsheet to add up the days you've been in Shengen over the past 180 and then just start hiding old rows when necessary. You can then play with planned trips to manipulate dates to avoid exceeding 90. Consider allowing a day of leeway (i.e. maxing out at 89) in case anything goes wrong.



Column A    Col B                   Col C                               Col D
Date           In Shengen?        No of days in last 180      Alert

Col C is either a COUNT or COUNTIF (depending on if you want to use 1/0 or Y/N in B) on the same row and preceding 179 rows in D. Col D in mine says in bold red letters ALERT if C ever exceeds 90.

[petejh]

There’s also an extended ‘long stay visa’ which you can apply for which permits a stay longer than the 90-in-180 rule. It allows for up to a year.
I don’t have the link but you can find it easily enough. I read about it earlier this year on one of the various campervan forums - anecdotes by posters of it being easy to get. Ukc probably also have a thread with details.

[Neil F]

Thanks all, for those really useful answers.

Alex - yours was particularly useful, as the first thing I did when I started to think about this this morning (prior to posting here), was to build an Excel model.  But clearly retirement has done nothing for my Excel skills (I used it daily when working) and I got a bit lost... 

I've now built your model, which gives me exactly what I was looking for, so many thanks for the pointers.

Now to plan some trips 

Neil