I’m a Portuguese citizen with Asian descent that lives in the UK. I flew to Helsinki yesterday and produced my Portuguese id card, the border guard insisted I need my passport as I flew from UK which isn’t part of Schengen. I then produced my passport which I kept deep in my backpack. He eventually let me in to this lovely country but not without a stringent digging of my background and my future plans.
I went to the hotel, did some research and the European Commission’s website seems to suggest I can enter Schengen with my ID card from any part of the world even planet Mars.
1) Did I get the law wrong?
2) Is he simply ignorant?
3)Was it because he hated the UK for leaving the EU which I’m a victim?
4) Could he have been racist? I only said that because he tried to scratch my passport photo to make sure I didn’t forge it.
Cheers
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/entry-exit/eu-citizen/indexamp\_en.htm
Flown in from UK yesterday almost denied entry citing id card issue
byu/No_Law_1528 inFinland
Posted by No_Law_1528
7 Comments
No. You are victimizing yourself. Just normal procedure…
You got the law wrong.
Travelers to and from the UK need to show passport, simple as that
1 yes
2 no
3 no
4 no
From the page you linked:
> Documents you need for travel to / **from** a country outside the EU and the Schengen area
>As an EU national, if you are travelling to a non-EU country, you will need a **valid passport** and for some countries a visa. Check the list of non-EU/non-Schengen countries where a visa waiver applies to EU nationals.
>Before you travel, check the entry requirements (for example, passport validity) and any other restrictions that might apply in the country you are travelling to as well as when re-entering your home country. Note that children and minors need their own travel document and where necessary a visa. Check the latest travel advice (provided by national authorities) for the country you are travelling to.
>**If you re-enter an EU or Schengen country from abroad, your travel document must be valid on the day you are travelling.**
It seems you didn’t read it fully or somehow misunderstood what was written.
Besides the fact that none of us can guess a border guard’s supposed motives, your questioning this is really odd and weird.
”
3)Was it because he hated the UK for leaving the EU which I’m a victim?
4) Could he have been racist? I only said that because he tried to scratch my passport photo to make sure I didn’t forge it.
”
I think you’ve encountered a quite untypical scenario, coming to EU/Schengen without a passport and with just ID. Because typically, if one is outside Schengen, they almost always have a passport, because typically one can’t travel out of schengen/EU without one. In most of the world, airport require passport for boarding the flight for flights coming to europe (not in UK though). Which is the reason for the border guard being more stringent.
From the source, it seems to say that “Documents you need for travel to / from a country outside the EU and the Schengen area … a valid passport”.
But also, it seems to be the case that you can enter EU/Schengen from abroad if you can prove that you are EU citizen, with a valid ID for example. And I also found people who come to UK to Schengen with only EU ID on reddit. Some have faced problems and questioning, but mostly works. That EU website also left it a bit unclear.
So seems to be a bit special case. I think that generally, passport is needed for non-EU travel, in and out, although it’s not impossible come with EU ID too, but it’s probably quite rare. Inside EU/Schengen, eu ID is of course fine.
So it’s impossible to guess border guard’s motives, although I wouldn’t overanalyse it. Border guards typically aren’t that customer-oriented. I’ve faced quite cold customer service from border guards outside schengen my self. Checking for forgery is typical, I’ve seen that happen in different places.