Schengen shenanigans

Schengen is a small municipality in southeast Luxembourg. It is a big topic right now across motorhome blogs and internet groups. Not the place of course, but the agreement about frictionless borders that was named after it, now covering 26 countries in Europe. It seems increasingly likely that UK citizens' access to those arrangements will cease, very soon in the case of a 'no deal Brexit, or in 2020 at the end of the transition period if a negotiated exit prevails. A really useful piece about the implications of this was posted recently on the 'Our Tour' blog, headlined somewhat ominously 'The Death of the Year Long Motorhome Tour of Europe' Basically once the UK is no longer a member of the EU, the new travel visa arrangements proposed at the moment will restrict UK tourists to spending no more than 90 days within any 180 day period travelling in the 26 countries covered by the Schengen agreement. This will require an 'Etias waiver visa, named after the IT system developed in Europe to manage visitors from outside the Schengen block. The latest proposal is to charge  UK citizens 7 Euros to apply for the visa waiver on-line to cover  'multiple trips within a three year period'. This sounds reasonable, but what the Guardian article referenced above does not quite make clear is that these 'multiple trips' cannot amount to over 90 days in any 180 day period.

This being the case it would seem that Jason and Ju (Our Tour) are right, the new arrangements will put the kibosh on any trips over 90 days in future. Lots of people - not just 'full-timers' - are going to affected by this. We never travel for more than 70 - 80 days  in a row, finding cabin fever starts to kick in somewhere around the three month mark and we are ready for a break. What we tend to do is park the moho somewhere secure in the south and fly home for 6 - 8 weeks around Christmas. In fact this is exactly what is happening tomorrow, - fly  back to Malaga, collect the van, then wend our way home slowly, arriving back in the UK in mid-March. In future this will become impossible. Once we leave the EU, so far as the Schengen regulations go, we will be no different to American, Australian or Peruvian visitors to Europe; we will be subject to visa regulations which state that you can only spend 90 days out of 180 trotting around the 26 member countries that make up the Schengen travel area.

So, to take our travels as an example, even though in the autumn we travelled for 72 days and between January and March will be on the road for a further 64 days - neither journey over 90 days - under the proposed arrangements we will exceed the Schengen area visa allowance. Why? Because as soon as we enter a Schengen area country (in this instance France) the clock will start ticking on our 180 days; in the case of our current trip a period  starting on September 15th 2018 and will end on fol March 24th 2019 . During this  period we wiil have clocked-up 137 days in Europe, way over the allowance.

Motorhomers are a determined and inventive bunch. I have read a number of proposed creative solutions which might enable people to extend the 90 day limit. Most involve spending some time in the 'non-Schengen' states bordering the travel area. These include within the EU: Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Ireland. Nearby countries outside of the EU with separate visa arrangements are places like Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and Turkey. Morocco is a short ferry hop from Spain and is also a popular winter destination for European motorhomers. Of course the UK will also be outside European travel area  post Brexit.

So to demonstrate how the 90 days could be extended here is an actual example. Like many people I enjoyed following 'Our Bumble's' intrepid trip through the remote areas of eastern Turkey last year, especially Joanne's striking photographs. Trailblazing stuff. Inadvertently perhaps, their journey exemplifies how we might seek to travel long term in the future. So far as I can work out from their blog, they left the UK on 31st May, arrived at the Turkish border on August 5th  (66 days), then they used up all of their 90 day Turkish tourist visa, returning to the UK quickly in three weeks or so during November. Epic!

However, you could extend this plan and still keep with in the Schengen visa arrangements. Wander more slowly towards Turkey through Europe taking up to 90 days; then do as 'Our Bumble' did and spend 90 days in Turkey using that country's tourist visa. When you return into the Schengen area, because 90 days have elapsed since you left (remember the 90/180 rule) you now can take a further 90 days to wander back to Blighty - a trip of 270 days. Indeed, because it is likely that your route took you through countries in the Balkans who are not part of the Schengen area, the days you spend there on the outward and return journeys do not count towards the 'Schengen 90 day limit'. Quite easily you could nudge your big trip towards 300 days. Variants of the approach might be built around an extended stay in Morocco or any nearby place outside the Schengen travel zone. What is depressing is what we have now, freedom to wander at will through 26 fascinating nearby countries is going to be curtailed. In future it might require a modicum of creativity a plan to long term European moho trip. I guess it is what all those Aussies and Americans we have met on our travels  have been doing for years.

Looking back at our own travels during 2018 what we did provides an alternative approach to travelling for a long period yet staying within the proposed Schengen visa requirements.  Last year we travelled abroad for a little over five months. Most of it was by motorhome in Europe, but for five weeks in early Spring we were in New Zealand and the Far East. One solution to having an enforced 90 day moratorium on travelling in Europe is to take it as an opportunity to travel elsewhere.  Checking 'Skyscanner' for example, I have just found a return to Rio de Janeiro next month for less than £400 - that is little more than the cost of the Portsmouth/Bilbao ferry. Of course long haul is never going to be as cheap an option as living in Europe in a moho, partly 'off-grid'. So, some facts and figures - for the two of us our 133 days in Europe cost about £25 per day - including everything other than the cost of food and entertainment - which we would have incurred anyway if we stayed at home. Our Far East/New Zealand trip, including flights, accommodation and car hire works out at £117 per day for the pair of us. Recalculating for a trip to Brazil, for instance, where the flights are less than half of what we paid to go to New Zealand, then the daily cost drops to £90 - £95 per day. Not something we could afford as a matter of course, but  alternate years maybe. In between there are bits of the British Isles we we are unfamiliar with. We have never taken the moho to Scotland, Ireland or Cornwall for example.

The really regretable aspect of the forthcoming changes is the impact it will have on what might be termed 'shoe-string long-stayers'.  Over the years we have met many interesting people travelling by motorhome through Europe for months on end using wild camping spots to minimise the cost. All kinds of folk - a British family in Guadarmar del Segura with three children, home-schooling them during their year long adventure; the sassy thirty somethings we chatted to on  a quayside in Pilos in a tiny camper funding their itinerant lifestyle doing freelance app design; the lone older guy we met in Puntas de Calnegre living permanently in a venerable Winnebago on his savings - escaping from a messy divorce through fishing! What about the many people subsidising their extended travel by renting out their houses? In future none of this will be possible, unless of course you are wealthy and can afford to jet off somewhere during the enforced break. Surely this is the most frustrating aspect of the change, like most socially regressive policies, the wealthier you are, the less it will affect you.

When I first came across the Our Tour article I posted a link to it on the 'Motorhome Fun' Facebook site. It provoked considerable debate, so much so that Gill checked some of the other groups she is linked to and found similar 'Schengen' conversations happening on those. The points coming-up were similar. As you might expect inevitably there were a few 'we are leaving just get over it' responses from resident 'Faragistes' but most people were more sensible than that, questioning the practical implications of the proposals, though many doubted if it would really happen. 'Too much uncertainty about anything at the moment - so no point in worrying' was one common response. OK, but unless the entire Brexit project founders, there is a new 'people's vote, and Remain prevails (a lot of ifs here) then in all likelihood the UK will leave the EU. Given that one of the cornerstones of 'Leave's' message concerned immigration and 'taking back control of our borders', whatever shape the final exit arrangement takes I think we can be sure it will not include free movement of people - Discount on-line Etias visa waivers here we come....not immediately on leaving the EU, but at the end of the transition period, whenever that may be.

Another point of view was - 'well nobody checks passports once you get to Europe, so what is to stop you staying for as long as you want?' It is true, apart from at Calais/Dover, in five years of wandering around Europe by motorhome our passports have been checked once - as we boarded the night ferry from Patras to Brindisi - security was tight, but then at the time Greece was being swamped by refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict. However there are good reasons why as UK citizens our movement is rarely monitored, through the UK opted out of Schengen, as EU members we still benefit from the freedom of movement it enables. I wondered how other 'third country' visitors to the EU managed, so found myself reading a very long Wikepedia article about the administration of Schengen. . Presumably few people are quite as geeky as I am - luckily you don't need to struggle through the whole thing as the map below summarises the current situation.

Basically post Brexit we will change from a yellow country to a green one. At present 'green country' citizens can enter the Schengen area without a visa so long as they fulfil the following criteria:

To be able to enter the Schengen Area/Bulgaria/Croatia/Cyprus/Romania visa waiver, the above Annex II nationals are required to:

• have a travel document which is valid for at least 3 months after the intended date of departure and which has been issued in the previous 10 years ^[40]
• have a machine-readable passport with digital photo or a biometric passport
• have sufficient funds for their stay and onward/return journey
• justify the purpose and conditions of their stay
• not be listed in the Schengen Information System as someone to be refused entry and not be considered as a threat to public policy, internal security, public health or the international relations of any Schengen country.^[41]

The electronic system that supports all the this-  Etias -  is due to become fully functional in 2020, at that point a fully on-line visa waiver system will come into force - similar to the one used  by the USA. Going back to the original issue - how can the authorities check exactly how many days you have been in the Schengen area ?- The answer is, I suspect the system at the moment is patchy, but when the Etias is fully implemented it will become easier to track movement. Co-incidentally this may well co-incide with the end of any transitional period following Brexit. So, in response to the question posed by the Our Tour article - Will this mark the death of the year long motorhome tour of Europe? - the answer is probably yes, for most people, unless they are prepared to alternate every 90 days between Schengen and non Schengen countries. We will know in a couple of months when we are faced with this new reality - in the case of a no deal, then so far as I can tell the 90/180 rule would apply immediately. If there is agreement then the change will be phased in  during the transition period - perhaps by 2020/1.

I have a headache now. It will disappear mysteriously tomorrow at around 4:00pm, when we fly back to Spain and I fire-up on the moho engine and we head towards Malaga Beach area autocaravanas - because for the moment the answer to the pertinent question that Jason and Ju posed is...NOT YET!