Forum Topic

Post-Brexit passport regulations warning

You may think that as long as you have six months left before the expiry date you will be okay travelling to an E.U. country, but it’s not that simple.  A friend of mine, a touring musician with ten months left on his passport, was refused admission to a Helsinki bound flight because more than ten years had elapsed since his application.  Here is what the government rules say:                ‘Passport validityWe recommend that on the day you travel you have at least 6 months left on your passport. This allows for:travelling in Europe for up to 3 months (you don’t normally need a visa for the first 90 days in every 180 days of travel)the requirement from most European countries to have at least 3 months left on your passport on the day after you leaveYour passport must also be less than 10 years old on the day after you leave. If you renewed your current passport before the previous one expired, extra months may have been added to its expiry date. Any extra months on your passport over 10 years may not count towards the minimum period needed.These rules do not apply to travel to Ireland. You can continue to use your passport as long as it’s valid for the length of your stay.’

Alastair Banton ● 912d35 Comments

No one but the guy who should is Cameron who stated something he couldn't finish.Thank's a bunch Dave.

Adrian Irving ● 908d

So who’s taking responsibility for the mess that is Brexit?

Stewart Jones ● 908d

All fair and true. My comment was perhaps less about this specific example of travel issues and more about how such events are explained by the person inconvenienced. A bit of this thread has been about obtaining residency rights in EU countries. A common issue has been attending the meeting to verify documents, hand over ID such as photo and finger prints, etc. There have been a number of people complaining that they missed the invitation & appointment over the summer because they were not in the country. This was often presented in the passive voice "the prefecture emailed me but it was missed because I was in the UK" rather than a greater sense of ownership such as "my decision to travel, when I should have remained here until I had my residency permit, meant I missed my appointment". That is, own your decisions and mistakes.

Alan Clark ● 908d

Alan, I do think an airline has a duty of care to alert a customer that they need to be familiar with any regulation change that could material affect their travel before finalising the sale of a ticket.As a matter of goodwill and business sense any company would be well advised to warn a customer of  pitfalls prior to the purchase of any item including flight tickets.Having said that I agree we need to take responsibility for our own mistakes but sellers also have a duty of care.

Adrian Irving ● 908d

Can you explain how that applies, perhaps with an example?

Alan Clark ● 908d

Lesson #1 for Brexit fans.If only these rules didn't also apply to non-fans.

Susan Kelly ● 908d

And a very irritating to have to queue for 25 minutes in the non EU passport line yesterday on a flight back to Heathrow whilst envying the EU passport holders with no queue at all who can exercise all the rights that we have thrown away for very little indeed.

Stewart Jones ● 908d

Personal responsibility. In our current blame culture it is everyone else’s fault. Hence the frequent use of the passive voice. That is:Active: I failed to renew my passport in timePassive: The airline refused my boarding because of my passport Own your sh*t.Avoid the passiveLesson #1 for Brexit fans.

Alan Clark ● 908d

Oh, and in that case the man tried to get his fare back from RyanAir, saying that they had his passport details in advance and should have warned him. Not a hope in hell!

Susan Kelly ● 909d

Same story in the Times travel section this morning -- refused boarding. This needs to be widely clarified.

Susan Kelly ● 909d

True, border checks are very limited and enforcing the 90 days for say, me, travelling around Italy for more than would be difficult. The issue is more acute for cross-border workers - someone living in Germany but working in Holland for example. This requires them to obtain a specific frontier worker permit on top of their country of residence permit.

Alan Clark ● 909d

I know you are correct  Alan about the country specificity but if you are in France you can get into Italy , Spain etc without the need to show your passport. How will the ninety days be counted if you just get on the train from France to Italy?

Stewart Jones ● 909d

Sorry but post-Brexit residency is country specific. I, as a confirmed and certified non-EU resident of France, have zero rights to live or work in other EU countries. If I travel to Spain or Germany then my travel is limited to 90 days. That is 90 days across all countries in EU.One of the many delightful benefits of Brexit.

Alan Clark ● 909d

Ah, you need evidence! Join a few Facebook groups who have been supporting Brits get a carte de séjour. Contact people who have acted as liaisons between the UK and French authorities on all of this. Their stories are not just consistent with my posts but also part of my references.You clearly know nothing of the situation in Europe for UK immigrants.Tell me again the significance of the numbers you demand.And please refer to false attempts for WA residency as illegal immigrants

Alan Clark ● 909d

Yes, but you first have to obtain residency so your passport is not stamped when you enter the country where you have obtained said residency. So I imagine if you have obtained Spanish residency you can go to any other Schengen country overland without your passport being checked as there are no border controls. Not sure if you fly that the same applies.

Stewart Jones ● 910d

We could try a calculation for one country.I saw x 8 UK registration card outside the Agen prefecture at 2pm one day. Say only 1 was a second home owner making a false claim. And say there are only 2 appointment slots a day (there were 6). And say these only take place Monday to Thursday (they also worked Friday). And even though application process only ran for one year (Oct-Oct) that this particular prefecture only did withdrawal agreement processing for 20 weeks; maybe late getting going.That is 240 false applications. There are 90 departments in France. But say only 10 have any sort of number of second homeowners. That is 24,000.Which funnily enough is the scale of difference between expected full time residents and actual applications.

Alan Clark ● 910d

So you can't back up your allegations. Quelle surprise.

Richard Greenhough ● 910d

That is not the question. Whether it’s a few hundred or a few thousand across all the EU countries is not the real issue.

Alan Clark ● 910d

"..the number of Brits parking UK registration cars outside the office where they go for fingerprints and documentation reviews.."So how many are there, and how do you know ?

Richard Greenhough ● 910d

I used the word plenty specifically because there are, as yet, no published data that I can find. This is primarily because these applications are « under the radar” and not something any would sensibly advertise. There are strong indicators however. First the higher number of overall applications than estimated full time residents. Second, the number of Brits parking UK registration cars outside the office where they go for fingerprints and documentation reviews (in a year when it has been made very clear that changing the car registration is absolutely mandatory). Third, the questions and responses on the various Facebook groups set up to help these residency applications. This last indicator makes it very obvious that quite a few people have made such false submissions.I can only guess what plenty means in terms of specific numbers. Maybe a few thousand. That sounds like plenty to me.

Alan Clark ● 910d

You might think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

Richard Greenhough ● 910d

Perhaps Al is one of them?

Paul Fisher ● 910d

"There will have been plenty of examples of second home owners who also applied for this residency permit. They decided, when faced with their stay in that second home being limited to 90 days out of 180, that obtaining a residency permit under false pretenses (i.e. they lied about being full time residents) would be good for them."Do you have any statistics to back up your allegation that there are "plenty" of examples of British citizens obtaining residency permits under false pretences ?

Richard Greenhough ● 910d

I’m unclear as to what you refer to when you use the term « allegations ». If you could be more specific then I could provide more details.However what I can offer is a paragraph by paragraph justification.My first paragraph : this cover simple facts. Things set out in the UK/EU withdrawal agreement. You can easily verify these yourself.My second paragraph : this comes from first hand experience, from people I know and from what has been witnessed by many. The previous poster, Mr Conneely, confirms the same.My third paragraph : there is more conjecture here as it is a largely forward looking section of my post. It can be hard to provide hard verification to forward looking projections, such as « we will get a better deal than we have whilst in the EU as they need us more than we need them ». Very hard indeed.

Alan Clark ● 910d

I wasn't suggesting putting a UK sticker on the number plate, but somewhere else on the rear of the car, as has been done with GB stickers for the past century or so.

Richard Greenhough ● 910d

Are you just making assumptions, or do you have any facts to back up your allegations ?

Richard Greenhough ● 910d

If you put a sticker on a number plate it may not be legal in the uk, as you have altered it.

Nicholas Beard ● 910d

The residency permit system under the withdrawal agreement was for full time UK residents in a EU country. The details varied slightly for each EU country but the basics were the same: evidence that you have been a full time resident prior to 31/12/2020 (and that you meet criteria such as means to live without state aid) and you were given a residency permit and thus rights to live and work in that country (but that country only and not pan-EU rights of residency.)There will have been plenty of examples of second home owners who also applied for this residency permit. They decided, when faced with their stay in that second home being limited to 90 days out of 180, that obtaining a residency permit under false pretenses (i.e. they lied about being full time residents) would be good for them. It would give them access to their second home anytime for as long as they liked. In doing so they also decided that (1) they did not care about burdening the system with their false applications at the detriment of genuine applications being processed; and (2) that it was worth the risk of the local authorities noting their statement of being full time resident and demanding full taxation for as long as they were/are residents. There are, to my knowledge, no EU country which has acted outside the withdrawal agreement rules and knowingly given residency permits to UK citizens who did not make the claim of being full time resident. So expect lots of stories of people who had falsely obtained a residency permit now bleating because they subsequently obtained a massive tax demand. And after this year the rules are also clear - any UK citizen wishing to move full time to a EU country must do so as a third country national - that is, first obtain a visa, second apply for residency in the same was anyone from outside the EU must do.

Alan Clark ● 910d

Always laugh at this description of " UK ex pats" they're immigrants .

David Burke ● 910d

Who has a passport valid for 11 years?

Lucas Cox ● 910d

While I have no experience of the issue, friends with Spanish properties especially are with the obtaining of "residence" permits able to omit the days spent in Spain from the EU limits apparently. I would not be surprised that other EU countries with a large UK expat community have adopted a similar pragmatic approach to keep the Brits coming!

Joe Conneely ● 911d

But remember you are now only allowed to be in EU countries for 90 days out of  any 180 days, whatever sticker you have. And now your passport is stamped so the clock starts ticking as soon as you arrive in any EU country. Formidable!

Stewart Jones ● 911d

Sticker heaven. Lovely,

Stewart Jones ● 912d

If the number plates don't show UK (which most won't) then you can add a new sticker, just like the old GB ones.

Richard Greenhough ● 912d

A Brexit bonus. Also take care if you take your car to the EU. The number plates must show UK not GB.

Nicholas Beard ● 912d