Several British travellers have told how they were incorrectly accused of overstaying their 90-day allowance due to the chaotic introduction of the EU’s new EES biometric border checks.
Teething troubles with the EU’s new system of passport checks has mostly focused on long queues at airports – but for some travellers the problems have been more serious as their 90-day allowance in the EU Schengen zone has been wrongly calculated.
Several British travellers have spoken out after their days had been wrongly recorded, leading to them facing travel bans or large fines.
British author Jojo Moyes told UK consumer organisation Which? that she was accused by French border guards in Marseille of overstaying her allowance when departing from her second home in France. It turned out that after a previous trip to Portugal, her exit from the Schengen zone had not been correctly registered.
She told the publication: “The clock had been ticking ever since. Under Brexit rules, I was now an overstayer. The border control senior officer at Marseille warned me that I should not attempt to re-enter Europe until it is sorted out, or face a €10,000 fine and a two-year ban.”
Which? said it had been contacted by dozens of people with similar stories.
“One traveller told us her elderly parents were ‘utterly terrified’ and have decided not to travel to Europe again, after their exits via Bilbao airport weren’t recorded, leaving their days to ‘tick down’ after their exit.
“Another told us that they had been temporarily detained for two hours on the Serbian/Romanian border and asked to explain missing entry data from the EES system, because their journey through the Channel Tunnel from the UK to Calais hadn’t been logged in the EES system at Folkestone.”
The UK-France border has long been a source of concern over EES, and the system still has not been fully implemented at some entry points, with Eurostar and the Port of Dover only applying EES to a small minority of travellers.
The Local France has also been contacted by a British carte de séjour residency permit holder in France, who had been incorrectly registered with EES, which then showed him as an over-stayer.
Non-EU citizens who are resident in an EU or Schengen zone country should not be subject to EES checks and should instead present their passport and residency permit/visa at a manned border control point.
The EU’s ’90-day rule’ allows citizens of some non-EU countries – including the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and Japan – to spend up to 90 days in every 180 in the Schengen zone without needing a visa.
READ ALSO: CALCULATOR: How to work out your 90-day allowance in France
Travellers who overstay their 90-day allowance face a range of sanctions from fines to a ban on entry to the Schengen zone or, in extreme cases, deportation.
The chaotic implementation of EES, which has included the system being suspended at times if it was causing long delays, means that some people’s dates of entry and exit have not been correctly recorded by the system.
If a person is logged as entering the Schengen zone but then their exit is not recorded, the system assumes that they have been in the Schengen zone the entire time, leading to some people being flagged as overstayers.
The EU has now created an online calculator where people can see how many days they have remaining of their allowance.
If the calculation is wrong, they can also challenge it by contacting the relevant data commissioners.
The Local has contacted the EU Commission for comment.
READ ALSO: How to check your EES 90-day allowance, and what to do if it’s wrong
