B3: Schengen Adds Complexity

Schengen 90/180-day rule gives an international company an HR problem and extra administration

Makeitwell Engineering Ltd have a design studio in Germany and manufacturing facilities in Poland and Slovakia. Some of their staff make frequent business trips. The HR department are fully aware that from 2021 there will be no separate business and tourist visas. Short-term stays in the Schengen Area for both tourism and business reasons will be collectively calculated and count towards the same 90-day allowance.**

Frequent travellers will be at risk of using up their allowance for one purpose, for example business trips, and then not having enough days left for a scheduled holiday or a further urgent trip. Obtaining formal waivers may be problematic as the process currently takes several days and varies from country to country. Previous visa infractions can make it impossible.

The company does quite a bit of scenario planning and determines that it

• cannot require people to record their personal travel plans or past trips

• will have to invest in a system that can record actual and planned trips and allow staff to determine whether they are at risk

• must now include Schengen 90/180 overstay when risk assessing some parts of their business

• needs to budget for any cost of working within Schengen 90/180 rules

The company wonders why the government did not anticipate this but accepts that it is another bit of collateral damage caused by rushed negotiations carried out under adverse conditions by staff who had not had time to work on the detail.

Win-win 180/360 travel arrangements could avoid this collateral damage.