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Reader Question: My husband and I are in France on a six-month visa but it is set to soon end. We are American. Can we stay in France a few extra weeks on our 90 days allowance or must we return to the US and then return? 

It is legal to use your 90-day visa-free allocation for the Schengen area after your six-month French visas expire.

You will have a full 90 days to use, as you will not have spent any of the previous 180 in France using the visa-free amount (as you will have been staying here on a visa).

Visa-free short-stay access to the EU applies to citizens of countries such as the UK, US, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Japan, and several others. 

However, people of nationalities requiring a short-stay visa to enter the bloc (such as citizens of India, Pakistan, China, Nigeria, etc) need to exit the EU after the end of one visa and then apply for a new visa if they want to come back. 

As American citizens you have access to visa-free short stays, so as six-month visa holders you do not need to leave France and re-enter the country, and can remain in the Schengen area.

Officials at the Direction générale de la police nationale previously told The Connexion it was possible for this group of people to immediately benefit from their 90-day allowance after a six-month visa expires. 

If asked, you would need to explain to border officials when leaving that you used a combination of your six-month visa and 90-day allowance, providing as much evidence as possible (plane tickets, visa information, etc).

The incoming digital border security measures for the EU (the EES) will impact this in some cases. 

The European Commission informed The Connexion that people who enter France through a valid long-stay visa will not be impacted by EES as they will not need to log their information to enter. 

Much of the information the EES is set to collect (fingerprints, photo, etc) is, in any case, already collected when applying for a visa. 

If their visa expires and they choose to stay in the bloc on their 90-day allowance, they will need to explain the situation to the border guard upon their final exit as to why they are not in the EES system.

Likewise, if they entered the country before the start of their visa and were logged into the EES, and then this overlapped with the start of their visa, they would need to inform border guards upon exiting of the reason for apparently ‘overstaying’ so that this can be rectified.

Note that when the Etias scheme comes into force in late 2026, you will need to ensure you have a valid authorisation to enter the Schengen area prior to coming to use your visa-free 90 days.

People on some visas advised to leave and re-enter

We note that we have previously seen advice from the French Embassy in Canberra for applicants for a working holiday visa (a one-year visa for young people from certain countries) to the effect that if they want to stay on in the Schengen area for up to 90 days after this visa expires, they should leave the Schengen area and re-enter as a tourist under the 90/180 days rule. 

In such cases, there is no need for the person to return to their country of origin and then come back to the EU; people can simply leave the Schengen area and return so their passport shows them entering on their 90-day allowance. 

For example, if their visa ends on October 5, they could fly to the UK, Ireland (or Turkey, Morocco, etc) on October 4 and then back to France on October 6.