Greek Immigration / Visa issue.

[mcarling]

The worst thing that can help is that you might get flagged as an overstayer in the Schengen Information System. The result would be difficulty getting an EU visa or entry for five years.

This is not and should not be construed as legal advice but, if I were in your boat, I would sail out rather than fly out in January -- if at all possible.

Also, the 90/180 day rules are not counted the way most people think. To figure out whether or not your departure in January would be past the 90 day limit, I would need to know your entry and exit dates for _all_ previous visits to the Schengen Area -- unless they are separated by more than 183 days between visits. The essence of the counting difficulty is that the 180 days do not always start when you enter.

Here is an example:
- On 1 July 2012, I enter the Schengen Area for the first time and on 2 July 2012 depart the Schengen Area, with an entry and an exit stamp. This starts the six months clock. It also counts as 2 of the 90 days allowed during the six months.
- On 1 Nov 2012, I return, get an entry stamp in my passport, and stay for a while. How long can I stay? 151 days. The last day of the six month period will be 31 December 2012. On that day, I will have been in the Schengen Area 63 days (2+61). On 1 January 2012, a new six month period starts and I have a fresh 90 days from that date before I would be required to depart.

- Now assume that I also had a one day visit on 1 May 2012. In this case, the six months would end on Halloween. As of that day, I would have been in the Schengen Area only 3 days during the six months. A new six month period would then start 1 November 2012 upon my arrival to the Schengen Area.

- Now assume that my first visit to the Schengen Area started 1 December 2011. In this case, the 1 May 2012 visit would have been part of this six month period and a new six month period would have started 1 July 2012, so I would be back to enjoying a continuous 151 day stay from 1 November 2012 through 30 March 2013 -- without violating the 90 day rule.

Most of the passport control officers and their supervisors don't understand this, but the Schengen Information System does and the passport control officers will do what it tells them. They scan your passport and the Schengen Information System tells them that you're good to go -- or not.

In your case, if you sail out, the Schengen Information System will think everything is normal -- even though it erroneously believes you're on a commercial vessels. If you fly out, without first getting off the Crew List, the Schengen Information System should throw a yellow flag and the passport control officer should send you to a bureaucrat to take you off the Crew List (who may or may not be in the airport).

Note that if you have yourself taken off the Crew List and you've already been in the Schengen Area 90 days within the six month limit (which, as above, might not be the immediate past six months), then you MUST depart that same day to avoid being an overstayer. If I were in your boat and absolutely had to fly out, then I would get a late night flight (for which I could clear passport control before midnight) and go to the authorities at the port the morning of my flight (12 to 15 hours before my flight) to be removed from the Crew List.

[Lagoon4us]

Very interesting, we head there in March.

[goboatingnow]

mcarling, appologies I read through your calculations again and they are right but my bit below is right


The the Schengen Information System and the associated Visa information system , under the legislation setting them up does not store or transmit entry and exit dates/times. Individual countries system may and usually do. SIS-1 currently in existence, by legislation stores and forwards basic identidy and watch list information . Hence one Schengen country has no electronic information on your stay in another country .
Hence your statement that the SIS can "compute" overstays is incorrect. Individual country immigration system can and do, but not inter-country

The customs officer has to add up teh dates manually, which is why few bother unless there is a suspicion or you are on the watch list.


SIS-II is intended to address some of these shortcomings , but as yet is not implemented nor is the legislation/treaties in place to establish it formally,

I do not beleive you are right in you interpretation.

Note that technically sea time between Schengen countries is not counted as part of the 90 days. However it is difficult to get exit stamps for sea journies between adjacent Schengen countries and such stamps are not usually applied if one indicates the journey. If fact the rules of most countries state that there is no requirement to get exit stamps for journeys at sea to adjacent Schengen areas, even though to do so if useful.


Furthermore , depending on the visa type stamped in, you may have 1,2, etc or MULT ( multiple) entries. On a single visa, you may not renter after one trip irrespective of how short it is, until the 180 days expire.

NOTE that NZ passport holders are allowed 90 days in 180 in EVERY listed country ( all of the EU) by way of bilateral agreements.

dave

[goboatingnow]

- Now assume that my first visit to the Schengen Area started 1 December 2011. In this case, the 1 May 2012 visit would have been part of this six month period and a new six month period would have started 1 July 2012, so I would be back to enjoying a continuous 151 day stay from 1 November 2012 through 30 March 2013 -- without violating the 90 day rule.

to put it more simply,

if you just did a one day visit on a multiple schengen visa, the clock starts you could then visit for the last 89 days of that six months and the following 90days of the next six month period , hence you could enter on the 1 july, then return 89 days before the end of December( ie Oct-Dec), then return for 90- days Jan- thru to march. actually giving you a 179 contiguous days in the Schengen area. after that period you couldnt return to the Schengen until July. Does allow a potential cruiser to overwinter in the Schengen, ( with a trip to say London or Dublin for a bit of new year shopping!).

Note that its contiguous days not continuous days as you have to leave at the end of the 6 month period , irrespective of whether you have used the 90 days up.

days

[mcarling]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

SIS-II is intended to address some of these shortcomings , but as yet is not implemented nor is the legislation/treaties in place to establish it formally, ....

You may be right. I heard earlier this year that SIS-II was about to go live, but I haven't seen anything official.

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

I do not beleive you are right in you interpretation.

I'm not sure to which interpretation you refer. If you mean about when each six month period starts, see European Court of Justice case C-241/05 Nicolae Bot v. Prefet du Val-de-Marne.

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Furthermore , depending on the visa type stamped in, you may have 1,2, etc or MULT ( multiple) entries. On a single visa, you may not renter after one trip irrespective of how short it is, until the 180 days expire.

I might be wrong, but inferred from the OP that no visa is involved here.

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

to put it more simply,

if you just did a one day visit on a multiple schengen visa, the clock starts you could then visit for the last 89 days of that six months and the following 90days of the next six month period , hence you could enter on the 1 july, then return 89 days before the end of December( ie Oct-Dec), then return for 90- days Jan- thru to march. actually giving you a 179 contiguous days in the Schengen area. after that period you couldnt return to the Schengen until July. Does allow a potential cruiser to overwinter in the Schengen, ( with a trip to say London or Dublin for a bit of new year shopping!).

That's correct IF that one day trip at the beginning starts a new six month period, which would be the case if there had been no other trips to the Schengen Area in the previous six months.

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Note that its contiguous days not continuous days as you have to leave at the end of the 6 month period , irrespective of whether you have used the 90 days up.

You're right. I just read the Bot case (citation above) again and para. 28 covers this point.

[goboatingnow]

I'm not sure to which interpretation you refer. If you mean about when each six month period starts, see European Court of Justice case C-241/05 Nicolae Bot v. Prefet du Val-de-Marne.

I was referring to your comments that SIS calculates the stay duration, It doesn't, nor does it even track it. Individual countries system may do so, but only if you entered and exited that country.

dave

[mcarling]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

I was referring to your comments that SIS calculates the stay duration, It doesn't, nor does it even track it. Individual countries system may do so, but only if you entered and exited that country.

Ok. I see. If you're right that SIS-I is still in use, then that's true. I might have been wrong in thinking that SIS-II went live.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by mcarling

Ok. I see. If you're right that SIS-I is still in use, then that's true. I might have been wrong in thinking that SIS-II went live.

I beleive the implementation is ready ( or almost ready)I don't believe the treaty is though , I know the expected go live date is now sometime in 2013.

Note that based on the information I have I cant confirm that SIS-II will actually track entry exit on a Schengen wide basis. The primarily purpose of SIS-II is too establish a central database that can be queried and return a hit/no hit answer. Both the UK and Ireland are commited to integrate into SIS-II, whereas today they have no connection with SIS-I.

Dave

[onehalfmoon]

Hi
Thanks for the post. Some additional information on our situation is since I last posted.

It appears that getting off the Crewlist to depart Greece is not that difficult but it requires an Agent ($$$). About 7 days prior to our flight out we submit the paperwork, Airline tickets, PP's etc to the agent, they then file out a few forms from Passport Control and Port Police. Passport Control will then finalize everything and Stamp our PP's 48 hours prior to the flight. Passport Control will give a Travel Authorization which allows us to travel to the Airport (48 hours), Supposedly the rules state that the Agent or their representative must accompany us to the Airport and witness our departure but we were told that that was not required for our situation.

We have spoken to 2 different Agents and the both have more or less confirmed the above scenario. So, if all this infact works out we should be good.

Fingers Crossed

Tom

[mcarling]

Good luck onehalfmoon and please let us know how it works out for you.

[onehalfmoon]

Hi Again

This is all starting to become clearer to me. After reading through the previous posts on calculating the 90 /180 day limitations, I see a new possible out for us.

We originally entered GR, April 19, 2012 and departed July 1, 2012, 73 days.

We then re-enter GR, Oct 3, 2012, 167 days from the first arrival.

At this point the Passport Control Officer made a mistake. He stated that we could not re-enter as we had not been out of GR for the minimum 180 days. He did not look at the 73 days, 17 days short of the 90 day stay allowed.

So as I am to understanding this we should have been allowed enter on the April 19 entry Visa for an additional 13 days , to complete the original 180 days. At that point we could have re-applied for a new 180 day Visa.

Once the Official noted that we were short on the 180 days he did not look any further at the 90 days to see that we still had 17 day remaining. He then went to Plan B and the Crew List option, which may cost us hundreds of Euro's in fees to sort out.

We will pursue this new option to extricate ourselves from the Crew List. Not holding my breath, that a Greek Official would "undo" his mistake.

Thanks again for all of the GOOD information.

Tom

[goboatingnow]

you consumed 73 from the April 19, you have 17 days remaining to be used as you see fit within the 180 day period starting April 19. After that you must actually leave and re-enter to gain more time.( you cannot extend the visa from inside the country).

If you came in on a schengen wavier, they actually should never have put you on a crew list ( I suspect actually someone was trying to be "helpful").

Note this all assumes that you have either a Visa wavier or a MULT entry visa.

Dave

[mcarling]

onehalfmoon, to give you reliable answers, I need to ask two questions:
- which passport are you using?
- I understand from your original post that you had two other (earlier?) entries. When were they?

[onehalfmoon]

Hi

We are on New Zealand PP and all previous GR visits were more then 6 months prior to the 4/19/12 entry.

Cheers

[mcarling]

With a NZ passport, you don't have or need a visa for cumulative 90 days per six months. So the entry on 19 April counted a "first entry" for the purposes of the starting the clock on six months. The 3 October entry did not start a new six month period because the previous one was still running. 19 October would have been your 90th day. You could have departed on the 19th and returned on the 20th. Then you would have been good through 18 January.

I don't know whether or not being on the Crew List means that all of the above is legally inapplicable, but it seems so. Anyway, in practice your plan seems like a good one. Do let us know how it turns out in the end.

If you're planning to do anything like this in future winters, you might want to print out the Bot case cited above (in both English and Greek) so that you can show the immigration officer. His idea about needing to leave for a minimum period measured from the last departure before returning is not true. The only country I know of with such a rule is India (two months from the last departure, with some exceptions).