Staying in Europe (Schengen) longer than 90 days as an American¶
When we traveled previously in 2018-2019, we spent summer in Europe both times. In general you are allowed to spend 90 of any 180 days in the Schengen visa area. This is a huge part of Europe, and was always a rush against the clock because we’d love to spend more time in Europe.
I’ve found a way as an American to spend more time in Europe than 90 days, which are bilateral visa waiver agreements, which is basically an agreement that came into effect between the USA and a Schengen country before the treaty was signed.
USA Bilateral Agreement countries in the EU¶
I found this information in this reddit post, which covers a lot of the background:
Certain Schengen countries have the Bilateral Agreement law, which allows you to legally stay there for additional 90 days on top of the 90 days you spend in the Schegnen area. There are many EU countries that have this law but the problem is that most don’t actually seem to honor the law because it’s so old. There’s been more online discussion on it now with Reddit, but the common knowledge seems to be based off of my guide, which concluded that it’s only actually possible for Denmark and Poland.
You can find the official EU publication on this topic, which should be all that you need to show to initiate the 90 additional days, and hopefully on departure as well. It seems like you can’t leave the country that you have the extra 90 days during that time, but it includes some countries I wouldn’t mind spending a lot of time in like Italy:
Belgium - 3 months
Denmark - 3 months
Spain - 90 days
France - 90 days
Italy - 3 months
Latvia - 90 days in any half-year period
Hungary - 90 days
The Netherlands - 90 days
Norway - 90 days
Portugal - 60 days
This is an exiting new piece of information that I wish I’d had back in 2019!