When we met Paul and Carolyn outside a shop in Tarbert on Harris, the conversation started in the normal way, with our heavily loaded bikes sparking a discussion of what we are up to. What followed was nothing short of transformative for our trip…
We mentioned that we’d been to Norway and that we had only stayed for two months as, despite me having a German passport, Beck only holds a UK passport. To our knowledge at the time my freedom to travel without restriction in Schengen didn’t apply to my spouse. Carolyn holds an Irish passport and immediately questioned this. She and Paul (her spouse) have been travelling (rather more luxuriously than us) since 2018, on the basis that the restriction doesn’t apply to the spouse of an EU citizen, if travelling with (or to visit) said EU citizen. This wasn’t our understanding and much of our planning to date had been based on this restriction. Every time we’d looked into it, we’d been searching for information on Beck’s individual travel as a spouse to an EU citizen and missed the distinction when travelling with your EU spouse. The restriction does still apply to Beck if travelling alone.
Carolyn kindly took our email address and sent us the correspondence she had received back in the day concerning this matter. Just to check from our / a German perspective, I also emailed the Europe Direct Contact Centre. Their reply was unequivocal. I followed up with a query about the Entry Exit System (EES) that is due to be introduced, and again, a positive response. Here’s a snippet:
“
EES will not change your wife's allowed length of stay. Once the system becomes operational, just as now, she will be exempt from needing to abide by the restriction of 90 days within a period of 180 days in the Schengen Area as long as you are travelling together.
“
We can’t really believe this still but you can imagine our delight. We look forward to taking our time crossing Europe now. Woo!
(Big shout out to Paul and Carolyn for this revelatory moment, and for inviting us to stay at their place if we are passing on our way out of the UK)