Schengen/EU entry and 10 year passport rules

jj42

I’m planning on travelling to Italy this year, entry date 27th July 2024 then travel overland to France and return home on 11th August 2024. My passport is a 10 year UK passport issued on 20th October 2014, but it has additional months added so the expiry date is in June 2025.

Reading the passport entry rules it seems like I’d be ok to travel without renewal as:

1. The date of entry into the Schengen area is within 10 years of issue
2. I return to the UK more than 3 months before expiration 

I just wanted to clarify on point 2 as the 3 months after my exit date takes the passport over the 10 years since issue by about a month, despite not expiring until June 2025.

Will my passport be ok to travel on or will I need to renew? Thanks 

TELLIT01

In theory you are correct that your passport complies with all requirements.  However, if you intend to fly you need to check the requirements of the airlines too.

eskbanker

TELLIT01 said:

In theory you are correct that your passport complies with all requirements.  However, if you intend to fly you need to check the requirements of the airlines too.

Can't say I've heard of any airline with published policies that OP would fall foul of, but there have sometimes been reports of individual staff not understanding/accepting such policies, not that there's much that can be done about that!

TELLIT01

eskbanker said:

TELLIT01 said:

In theory you are correct that your passport complies with all requirements.  However, if you intend to fly you need to check the requirements of the airlines too.

Can't say I've heard of any airline with published policies that OP would fall foul of, but there have sometimes been reports of individual staff not understanding/accepting such policies, not that there's much that can be done about that!

I don't think it's much of a problem now but a well known Irish airline had its own interpretation of the rules when they first came in.  It wasn't a case of individual staff not accepting them.  Better safe than sorry for all the time it would take to check.

bex2012

You will need to check your passport expiry date. My understanding is that since Brexit any additional months that were added to passports pre 2018 are no longer valid, so if your passport was issued in October 2014, it will expire October 2024, regardless of the additional months.

https://www.abta.com/sites/default/files/2019-01/Passports%20QA-Jan-2019.pdf

Caz3121

bex2012 said:

You will need to check your passport expiry date. My understanding is that since Brexit any additional months that were added to passports pre 2018 are no longer valid, so if your passport was issued in October 2014, it will expire October 2024, regardless of the additional months.

https://www.abta.com/sites/default/files/2019-01/Passports%20QA-Jan-2019.pdf

incorrect - and initially caused some airlines to incorrectly deny boarding to passengers until properly clariffied

There are 2 checks for travel to EU

• issued less than 10 years before the date you enter the country (check the ‘date of issue’)
• valid for at least 3 months after the day you plan to leave (check the ‘expiry date’)

the expiry date is the one printed on the passport ( which may not be 'issue date + 10 years')

eskbanker

bex2012 said:

You will need to check your passport expiry date. My understanding is that since Brexit any additional months that were added to passports pre 2018 are no longer valid, so if your passport was issued in October 2014, it will expire October 2024, regardless of the additional months.

https://www.abta.com/sites/default/files/2019-01/Passports%20QA-Jan-2019.pdf

As above, that's wrong, perhaps unsurprisingly for a document that's five years old and written before the post-Brexit arrangements had been agreed!

The correct rules are shown in the first post of this thread (and in many other places more reliable than an old ABTA document!).

Neil49

Caz3121 said:

bex2012 said:

You will need to check your passport expiry date. My understanding is that since Brexit any additional months that were added to passports pre 2018 are no longer valid, so if your passport was issued in October 2014, it will expire October 2024, regardless of the additional months.

https://www.abta.com/sites/default/files/2019-01/Passports%20QA-Jan-2019.pdf

incorrect - and initially caused some airlines to incorrectly deny boarding to passengers until properly clariffied

There are 2 checks for travel to EU

• issued less than 10 years before the date you enter the country (check the ‘date of issue’)
• valid for at least 3 months after the day you plan to leave (check the ‘expiry date’)

the expiry date is the one printed on the passport ( which may not be 'issue date + 10 years')

Many thanks for clarifying the rules on this. 

I also have a passport that runs for 10 years and 8 months and had diarised a renewal date well in advance of what thought was a cut off at 10 years.