CaroFos

Oh - and we are visiting friends for a few days in France. And France has same 3 month rule as well... I think in my head when I looked at the passport there was more than 3 months left so it didn't really register that we might have an issue. Had we been traveling somewhere other than eu I might have thought more about it... ah well! Bang goes my nice relaxed Flounge visit tomorrow!

:D!

Switzerland has bilateral agreements with the EU where it is more or less treated as a member of the EEA and has to accept freedom of movement.

In February 2014 a referendum was held where the Swiss voted (by 50.33% to 49.67%) to limit this freedom of movement, but akin the troubles the UK is currently undergoing, they will not be able to limit it without endangering the rest of their relationship with the EU, and therefore are not going to be able to uphold the result of their referendum fully.


This is a common misunderstanding.

Freedom of movement IS NOT Schengen.

Freedom of movement means that EEA and Swiss citizens (and their family members) have the right to move within the EEA and Switzerland in order to exercise EEA treaty rights such as working.

Schengen is a cooperative effort between various European countries to eliminate regular document checks between their borders, to issue visas under a common policy, and to share certain intelligence.

As the UK is currently a member of the EU, British citizens have freedom of movement between to many European countries.

As the UK is not a member of Schengen, there are regular document checks between the UK and other European countries, regardless of one's nationality.

CaroFos

Thank you - so are you saying it's worth quoting the FOM act or not a chance of having it work in our favour?

Tobias-UK

Switzerland is bound by the Regulation.

Tobias-UK

If your husband is refused entry the Swiss will have unlawfully denied his Free Movement rights as the Family Member of an EU Citizen. He will not be refused entry, this will not be the first time the Swiss Immigration Officer will have seen this. Your potential problem, is the BA Visa Check desk - just use information I sent in the PM.

father_ted

The US Embassy in London now allows mobile phones, tablets etc. in, but not laptops or tablets with keyboards.

Cris L

Don't be so harsh on Swiss immigration officials.

Last years visit to Basel was not stamped in or out!
No clue why I wasn't stamped in. Didn't realise I wasn't, and in departure they said we won't stamp you now either!

on my visit I was transferring between France, Germany AND Switzerland at least 2x a day every day for 4 days and no stamps at all!

if you going to Geneva, can you not exit on the French side...

Tobias-UK

That will make no difference at all, the only potential difficulty will be BA.

corporate-wage-slave

Indeed. They even supply free wifi!

CaroFos

Thank you everyone ... Esp Tobias-UK for intro'ing the special EU info - had it been a Saturday or Sunday we would most definitely have had to rely on this and i think an important note to have documented here for future reference.. ..

Last night I filled in all the passport forms. we luckily had a photo to hand.. TIpped up at 7.30am at the US Embassy... told to wait aside until 8am.. on the dot of the lady called and made an appointment for my husband. We had to wait for an email to arrive on her phone (3 mins) and he was then allowed in.. I left him to it with instructions about needing to be out of their with passport by noon latest and head for Heathrow express in a taxi... anyways... he was given a temporary passport valid for a year and sent on his merry way within 20 minutes!! We have been so lucky... glad not to have to juggle with border control or somone at Heathrow having a bad day!! Thanks so much for all your help and information - so nice to have support and advice at my time of need! And I Can now look forward to my champagne breakfast again :-)

drhandsome

Excellent news, congratulations! Quite frankly, I did not expect it to go this smoothly.

KMPete

Mr. KMPete and I just renewed our US passports after our books had filled up with stamps (they're not allowing you to add new pages anymore to an existing passport). Good news, bad news situation. We had to fly back to the US to get expedited service, but we did get them back the same day; that's the good. The embassy in London told me they would not do an expedited passport at all and that it would take *at least* 2 weeks but they wouldn't guarantee it; obviously the bad news for you. Also, while in the US for this, the passport folks there said that expats would no longer be able to renew at embassies abroad. This is to take place sometime this year but neither of us can remember when he said that policy would start to apply. But definitely no expedited passports from here, and certainly not with a same day turnaround.

The good news is that there are passport offices all over the US that can do a same day passport renewal. However, you have to call to get an appointment and then physically be there as well. There's a $60 fee, on top of the normal passport renewal fee, for expedited service as well. It was actually quite a quick process on the day. We dropped off our existing passports with our applications and photos (not the same sizes as UK ones, so make sure you get the right size) and then came back about 6 hours later to pick them up. We used the office in San Diego - they were the nicest government agency I've ever dealt with - but I read great reviews about several of the different offices around the US. It can be hard to get appointments though at certain places, like New York. If you are going to go this route I might suggest trying Boston because they are a reasonably short flight from the UK but also had plenty of immediate appointments available when we were looking. I had appointments at about 5 different locations until I could figure out where we could get flights.

Good luck!

[Edit] I didn't even think about getting a temporary one! Good idea!

Tim1975

Congratlations. Good to hear it went well.

I had a passport panic last night. Thought I had lost my (UK) passport needed in 7 days time. Turned the house upside down, Made an appointment for an emergency replacement but only office with appointments was Glasgow (I am in Bath) so I thought I would have to spend all day today getting there and they still would not guarantee to get me the replacement in time.

Wife got home from work at 10pm and 15 minutes later she had round the lost passport. Panic over.

Tobias-UK

Enjoy ... and the trip!

LondonAndy

Well played! I didn't expect it to go that smoothly to be honest.

Reminds me of the time that we were in the queue to leave LHR for VIE and I realised my wife's Austrian passport had expired - it didn't get picked up at check-in, or the boarding gate. It was only on the way back to the UK that someone noticed it had expired. Luckily I'd already come back to the UK and was able to e-mail images of her (unexpired!) UK passport and after lengthy conversations between Immigration in the UK and Viennese Aiport officials she was allowed on the plane.....