Brussels, 14/06/2012 (Agence Europe) - Under the Schengen rules, France is allowed to ban people with short-stay visas from returning to France if they do not have a re-entry visa, but French authorities issuing re-entry visas are not allowed to restrict these individuals from only accessing the Schengen area in France.
In a ruling issued on Thursday 14 June 2012 in Case C-606/10, the European Court of Justice was answering a query lodged by the French government about interpretation of the Schengen border rules (EU Regulation 562/2006), wanting to know the limits of the temporary “residence and re-entry visa” and the “re-entry visa” and whether there were any temporary measures for people from outside the EU who leave France with only a temporary residence permit and therefore cannot return once the above-mentioned regulation came into force because it requires them to have a full residence permit or a visa.
In the ruling, the Court of Justice said that a “residence permit” allows the holder to enter and move around the Schengen area, to leave the Schengen area and return without having to request a visa, but this does not apply to “temporary residence permits” issued after an initial request for a residence permit or an application for asylum, which is excluded from “residence permits” as set out in the regulations. “Re-entry visas” are a national permit issued to someone from outside the EU (who does not have a residence permit, a visa or a visa restricted to a certain country or countries under the visa regulations) that allows the person in question to leave a member state for a specific reason and return later. It also allows the holder to travel through other member states to return to the country issuing the return visa, which is why it cannot be restricted to entering Schengen at the border of the country issuing it. No transition measures are laid down because the regulation in question was published in the EU Official Journal in 2006, and the rules laid down are therefore predictable and guaranteed. (FG/transl.fl)