Visa-free travel: no entry or exit stamp given between UK and French border?
I'm a US citizen traveling through Europe visa-free. I started my trip in Spain and got an entry stamp there. Later, I took the IDBUS from France to the UK and got an exit stamp from France and an entry stamp from the UK. (They made us all get out and go through two separate passport checkpoints.) Yesterday I took the night IDBUS bus back from the UK to Amsterdam. This time, we didn't have to get off the bus for passport checks: a UK official and a French official got on the bus and quickly checked everyone's passports, but no stamps were given. The last stamp in my passport is now my entry stamp into the UK, even though I'm in the Schengen Area again.
I'm confused: at the very least, shouldn't I have gotten an entry stamp from the French official? Is this common? What does this mean in practice? Will the burden of proof be on me to show that I haven't overstayed my 6-month period in the UK or my 3-month period in the Schengen region whenever I go through another border checkpoint?
Best Answer
To answer my own question: when I was crossing the border from Slovenia to Croatia, the border officer asked me about the lack of an entry stamp into the Schengen Area. I showed him my chewed-up IDBUS ticket and explained that, apparently, the French border control sometimes didn't stamp passports coming from the UK. He asked me why; I said that I didn't know, and that other travelers had the same story. He shrugged, gave me a stamp, and sent me on my way.
So my experience so far is that it's not a huge problem, but might require a bit of explanation + evidence.
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Can I go to France from UK without a visa?
You can travel to countries in the Schengen area, which France is part of, for up to 90 days in any 180-day period without a visa. This applies if you travel as a tourist, to visit family or friends, to attend business meetings, cultural or sports events, or for short-term studies or training.Can I travel to France from UK after Brexit?
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Answer 2
In my experience as a French national, our border control officers often forget to apply entry or exit stamps. They're police officers who can't be bothered to do the servile bureaucrat job of applying stamps. I have seen them lecture people for missing entry stamps that they had themselves failed to apply, at the same airport three weeks earlier. Their answer was "You should have asked for it".
So I guess that's the answer : you've got to ask for the stamp any time you leave or enter the Schengen area through France. The word for stamp in French, funnily enough, is "tampon".
I think there are no exit stamps in the UK for scheduled transportation, as in the US.
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