Do Schengen visa authorities know how an applicant flew within Schengen on their previous visit?
A friend of mine (Russian national) got issued a Schengen visa by Finland. In her application the purpose to visit Schengen was visiting her grandmother in Finland. She entered Schengen by train to Helsinki.
She also traveled to other Schengen countries (partially by air), and she had her final departure from Schengen from Vienna.
That departure was a few months ago. She has now been granted another Schengen visa by Finland. However, the visa came with a written note inside the passport that if it is found that Finland is not her main destination, she may be refused visas in the future. This note was not present the first time around.
She is now worried about flying within Schengen, as she wonders if the visa authorities can access her flight history and deduce/assume from it that Finland was not her main destination, even if that's not the case.
For example, if she flies to Stockholm and goes back by another means of transportation, she worries that visa authorities will simply see the flight to Stockholm and deduce that she might have spent more time there than in Finland.
Is this concern well founded? Do the people issuing her future Schengen visas have any information regarding her previous flights within Schengen? Or are the entry/exit stamps the only thing that matters?
To clarify, she does not intend to lie. However, if she flies to other countries at all, she is worried that this may give a misleading image to officials. That's all.
Best Answer
On an internal Schengen flight, your friend will not go through emigration/immigration controls. She will go through a security check, which will include a check of her identity.
So the information may end up in some official database at the airport. Nobody knows what kind of data analysis they will do with that in the future. There could be another terror attack, or the refugee numbers rise again, and the Schengen nations might decide to compare their databases more closely than they do now. Or political majorities change and this happens even without a dramatic event.
She should not lie in her visa application. If the Schengen authorities find out, they will be really unhappy.
Pictures about "Do Schengen visa authorities know how an applicant flew within Schengen on their previous visit?"
Do they check passport between Schengen countries?
Any person, irrespective of nationality, can travel between Schengen countries without going through border checks. However, national authorities can carry out police checks at borders between these countries and in border areas.Do Schengen countries share information?
As the countries within the Schengen Area have no border control checkpoints between member states, SIS helps to boost security within the area by sharing information between participating countries.Do embassies know about visa refusal in other countries?
The embassy doesn't track your refusal, CLASS does. That's a database accessible to every American consular officer in the world at the click of a mouse, so it's not just the embassy where the visa refusal takes place.Will Brexit affect Schengen visa?
Since Brexit became official on January 1, 2021, British citizens do not need a visa travel to one or several Member States of the Schengen Area for up to 90 days. Like foreign nationals, they must be able to provide certain documents, including a passport and travel insurance.REASONS WHY SCHENGEN VISA APPLICATIONS GET REJECTED (Highly requested)
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