IHere’s my latest update to the 90 180 day #schengen rule, who it applies to, how to work out how many days you have to left to visit the #eu, and much more, including what’s the only Schengen visa calculator that tells you everything you need to know. I’ll also clear up any confusion about the 90 day residency rule and the 183 day tax residency rule.
If you’d prefer to watch the video, click the pic below
Let’s dive straight in.
What is the Schengen Area?
It’s a group of European countries with no internal borders, which makes travel and trade easier within that area. If you imagine those countries in one big block, there’s just one outer border, so if you sail in or drive in, there will be border controls where you’ll need to show your passport. Of course you can fly directly into any of the countries too, bypassing the outer land borders, so basically all of the airports act like an outer border too where your passports will be checked. But once you’re in, you can travel from country to country without needing to go through border controls and show your passport.
What is the 90 180 day rule, and who does it apply to?
If you’re a citizen of an EU country, or travelling with a spouse who’s an EU citizen, the 90 180 day rule does not apply to you.
However, if you’re a citizen of a non-EU country and you’re not travelling with an EU spouse, you can only spend a total of 90 days in any 180 day period in the Schengen Area. Those days don’t have to be consecutive, it could be a weekend in France, then a gap of a few weeks, then a month in Spain, another gap, and then a few weeks in Belgium, you get the picture, just add up the days you’ve spent in the Schengen area within a period of 180 days, and it can’t be more than 90. Now, importantly, this period of 180 days is what we call a ‘rolling period of days’. What on earth does that mean? I’ll get to that in a few minutes, because it can cause some confusion when you’re travelling in and out a lot. Before that, here are some other questions to clear up.
What happens if you break the 90 180 day rule and overstay in the Schengen Area?
You could be fined or deported if you break the rule, and you could also be barred from entering the Schengen Area for a period of a couple of years. And if at some point you wanted to become a resident or citizen of an EU country, your record of overstaying could be held against you. It’s just not worth risking it.
Does the 90 180 day rule apply if you’re a non-EU citizen with residency of an EU country?
It depends. In this case, you’re allowed to stay in that one country as long as your residency allows, but if you travel outside of that country to another Schengen country, you need to follow the 90 180 day rule. That’s because becoming a resident of an EU country doesn’t make you a citizen of that country. They’re very different things. You can apply for citizenship once you’ve been in a country for a certain length of time, but that’s a whole other article.
Is the Schengen Area the same as the EU?
No it isn’t, there are countries that fall into both categories, and there are some European countries that are in neither category, but there are also EU countries that aren’t in the Schengen Area, and countries with a Schengen agreement that aren’t in the EU. And there are also some countries and principalities that are said to be ‘within the Schengen agreement’ for various reasons.
It’s a bit complicated, however HERE is a link below to a very helpful website with a colour coded map and lists of countries, it’s well worth checking it out if you’re a non-EU citizen planning to travel in Europe. And by the way, if you’re wanting to travel to Ireland, that’s a special case, HERE is a link all about it. Okay, moving on…
Let’s talk about the Schengen Visa. Do you need one to get into the Schengen Area?
This depends on your passport. EU citizens of course don’t need visas to get into the Schengen Area. All other country’s citizens, that we call Third Country Nationals, technically need a Schengen visa. However, the citizens of 63 of these countries have what’s called an automatic visa waiver so they can travel into the Area without applying for a Schengen visa. If you’re not from one of those countries, then you should contact your local consulate of the Schengen country you’ll be landing in for details of how to apply for this travel visa.
With the new Entry Exit System, or EES, coming into force in 2025 (hopefully), non-EU citizens will have their biometric passports scanned which will make it easier for border guards to check whether you’re okay to travel. Later in 2025 there will be a visa waiver called ETIAS to apply for, and that will be for all non-EU citizens who aren’t travelling with an EU citizen spouse and who don’t hold a residency permit for an EU country. Watch my recent video about the EES and ETIAS for more details.
Let’s get to the big tricky question, what is the rolling 180 day period?
This is definitely what confuses the most people about the 90 180 rule. And if anyone says to you, oh it’s easy you just count backwards 180 days, then trust me, there are almost always more questions to answer.
I recently had a 45 minute video call with a very intelligent man from New York who was having problems understanding the numbers on the Schengen visa calculator he was using, and he just couldn’t get his head round what it was showing and how it related to the days he wanted to spend in Spain. Especially as he wasn’t just a tourist, he needed to take various work trips here too, and sometimes he didn’t get much warning from his boss, so he had to be very careful he didn’t overstay, and be even more careful of not booking too many holidays in the future in case he suddenly had to take a work trip in between now and then.
Here’s my explanation of the rolling 180 day period, and I think you’ll see what the problem is.
But if you’re still confused after this, don’t panic, I have a solution.
So, imagine this: today is always day 180, always, and that doesn’t mean a whole new 180 day period starts the next day. No. Forget about the future for now. Just count backwards from today, day number 180, all the way back to day 1 in the past, that’s about 6 months ago, then count how many days within that period you spent in the Schengen Area. That’s the easy bit.
But now let’s look into the future. What happens to the 180 day period when we get to tomorrow? Well, when tomorrow comes, it’s not ‘tomorrow’ anymore from your point of view, it’s today. So, remember, if today is always day 180, that means day 180 has moved forward one day, and so has day 179, and all of the days all the way back to day 1 have moved as well, the whole 180 day block has rolled forward one day. What yesterday used to be day 1 is no longer in your block of 180 days, it’s outside of it, so if you spent that day in Schengen, it doesn’t count in your new calculation of the number of days spent in Schengen, it’s fallen off the end. Is that clear?
So how does that relate to how you work out how many days you’ve got left to spend in the Schengen area at other dates in the future?
What you have to do to begin with is imagine yourself in the future on the day you plan to leave the Schengen area at the end of your visit, and that becomes ‘today’, day 180, and you just count backwards from there. So once you get your head round that, it’s all relatively easy to understand each 180 day calculation wherever it is in time, and while you don’t want to be sitting counting lots of 180 day periods if you’re going to be spending a few weeks here and there in the Schengen Area, it doesn’t take a very complicated app or spreadsheet to add in those dates in the future and calculate how long you have to wait until enough days have fallen off the beginning of your moving 180 day period, to allow you to book some travel time at the end of it.
Why did my New York friend that I mentioned earlier have problems with fully understanding his Schengen Visa calculations? And are all of the online Schengen Visa calculators and apps capable of keeping you safe from overstaying?
This is the really tricky part. Stay with me though, it’s worth it.
Lots of people use the many available Schengen calculators to work out their available holiday or work time, and they seem quite happy with the results, even though I’ve checked and reviewed plenty of them and they don’t always give the same answers or even have the capability to look into the future.
But our friend in New York wanted to delve a little bit deeper because the numbers shown under each calendar date on the calculators didn’t always make sense.
You see, he spent some time in Spain recently, not all consecutive days, and he wants to spend some time over the Christmas period here too, plus he wants to spend 3 months in Spain next summer, and once he books those holidays and sets them in stone on his Schengen calculator, he doesn’t want to cancel them, and he needs to know which dates he can travel to Spain for work between now and his Xmas break, and between then and his summer break. When he tested this by dropping in a week here and a week there into the calculator, the numbers under each calendar date said he still had plenty of days left to spend in Spain. The calculator hadn’t properly taken his future holiday into account. In fact, as I discovered when reviewing the calculators, there’s only one that does it properly, and I challenge anyone to compare their own calculator with this one and prove me wrong.
So which Schengen Visa Calculator is the only one that covers every situation?
I’m glad you asked, and I’m not being paid or sponsored by this app by the way, I did the reviews solely to give you the best information, and I spent a long time checking and double checking different dates and calculations to make sure they were correct. The app is called Schengen Simple, and as I write it’s only fully available on the Apple Store, but the Android version is being Beta tested and is nearing completion, so by the time some of you read this, it could already be available.
Okay so what’s ‘the other 90 day rule?’
Basically, this is a question about residency. If you want to spend more than 90 days in Spain, for example, you’re supposed to ‘apply for’ or ‘register for’ residency, depending on whether you’re an EU citizen or not. This is a national law rather than a Schengen one, but the two sometimes get confused. There’s a lot more to this question, so if you want to know, ask in the comments and I’ll send you the link to one of the many videos and interviews I’ve done about it.
What’s the 183 day rule?
This is to do with taxation. The basic rule is that if you spend more than 183 days in Spain in the tax year, which is from January 1st to December the 31st, then you are liable for Spanish tax. Again, there’s more to it than this, and I advise you contact a tax professional to have your circumstances checked.
Will Spain ever change the Schengen 90/180 day rule?
Well, that’s not something Spain can do independently, because it’s an EU rule, not just a Spanish one. In order to change the 90/180 rule, all of the Schengen member countries would need to be in total agreement. And from what I’ve read, there’s not a great deal of enthusiasm in the EU for doing that.
Spain or any other EU country could implement an extended visitor visa if it really wanted to, so that third country nationals, especially those who have properties here, could spend the long winter months in the sun, but even if there was political will and enthusiasm for this, it’s obvious from the length of time it’s taken to implement the driving licence swap that any legislation would take years to become law. So don’t hold your breath.
Why did Spain make the 90/180 rule? Is it revenge for Brexit?
Like I said, the 90/180 rule is a Schengen countries rule and it’s been in place for many years for third country nationals. The UK was among the countries that wrote the Schengen rules in the first place while it was part of the EU. So you can’t really blame Spain for stopping UK citizens staying for more than 90 days. The UK decided to leave the members’ club and be an outsider, thus reducing their citizens’ status within the EU. It is what it is, don’t blame Spain.
Is it possible to get round the 90/180 day rule?
Many people ask questions about how they can spend more than the 90 days in the EU. What they’re actually asking is, can I get round the rule, is there a way to bend the rule? Well, the answer is no. People have been trying for years, some people get away with overstaying because their passports didn’t get stamped or checked properly. You’ll always hear stories of people getting away with it, but these are actually few and far between, and in my opinion, it’s not worth trying to get round it, because there are punishments you wouldn’t want, especially if you have a property here. Just asking the question is a sign you want to break the law, you sneaky little person you!
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Article by Skatz
Handy Links:
Schengen Area countries:
https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/schengen-area/#google_vignette
Which country’s citizens need/don’t need a Schengen Visa?
https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/who-needs-schengen-visa
UK Government Advice about travel in the Schengen Area:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-if-you-need-a-visa-or-permit-for-europe
The Republic of Ireland and Schengen and ETIAS:
https://www.etiasvisa.com/etias-news/etias-ireland
Citizens Information Ireland – The Schengen Area
Applying for a Schengen Visa (EU website)
EU Visa Policy (including details of countries requiring a Schengen visa and which have a waiver)
https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen-borders-and-visa/visa-policy_en
Wikipedia – The Schengen Area – much information!
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