May 16, 2003
Schengen agreement question - Staying more than 3 months in Europe
You know, I had never even heard of the Schengen agreement until this post. Amazing what you find out about how to border crossings...
A question on the BootBoards:
Staying more than 3 months in Europe (Schengen agreement question)
What is this thing? In essence it's an agreement between some (not yet all) EU-member countries that has removed internal border checks at airports. Travelers are passport-checked at an external border — say, flying from New York to Paris — but don't have to go through border checks from, say, Paris to Berlin. You'd still present your passport for ID/ticket check at the checkin counter for your flight, but you would not have to go through lots of immigration rigmarole, is my understanding.
Looks like you are good to go about the Schengen-member countries for 90 days, then if you're staying longer you may need to leave and re-enter (say nip to Prague or Hungary for a few days or something). There's some great discussion on that in the above post.
Participating countries currently include:
The UK and Ireland aren't part of this yet, but can join if they want (that's a little simplified, but if you want details there's a link below).
You can find more details on the Schengen agreement via the European Union website:
Posted by Ant at 02:24 AM
Related: BootsnAll Travel Community, Europe Travel Info, Planning My Eurail Summer Trip
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Comments
Comment by aoife on May 16, 2003 08:34 AM
hmmm...I think Ireland is actually...I remember a Serbian woman i worked with in Dublin got a Schengan visa
The UK certainly isn't!
BTW the schengan thing came about to try and stop people applying for asylum in each of the different EU countries. The flip side of the visa is that if one of the countries rejects your application, you can't apply in any of the others
Comment by Roland on October 10, 2003 02:17 PM
You mentioned "Prague and Hungary". Both the Czech Republic and Hungary are joining the EU on 1 April, 2004, and I think it will only take a few years for them to sign the Schengen acquis. Hungary's border control system is almost already conform, the main problem to be solved is that Hungary has to enforce visa and strengthened border control towards citizens of some countries. This is not as easy as it seems at first, as parts of some of these countries (Serbia, The Ukraine) were historically Hungarian territory, and there are significant Hungarian minorities in these states. Making travel more difficult or more expensive would certainly not help split-families, cultural and educational cooperation, etc.