Schengen and D7 Resident

When you are granted temporary residency, you may travel throughout the EU for an unlimited number of days. You are also permitted to live in Portugal for an unlimited number of days. If you spend less than 183 days per year in Portugal, you risk losing your residency status. 

Thank you for responding, it is very much appreciated. As this is a very important issue, that could cause us big complications, do you have a reference for being allowed in other Schengen countries beyond the 180 days?  I have not been able to find official documentation of that. Thank you again  

If you become a resident of Portugal (temporary or permanent), then you become a resident of an EU country. There are no "checks" or "check points" when traveling from one EU country to another. The borders are open. The first and only "check point" one will encounter is when they enter their FIRST EU country. Think of the EU as one giant country with porous borders. One can come and go at will so long as one stays within the EU. When you depart from an EU country (for example returning to the US) the customs officer will know from their computer the day you arrived in the EU, but the 90 day rule will not apply if you have Portuguese residency. My wife and I recently stayed in Portugal for 124 days. When we left the EU it was through Brussels. When we handed the customs official our passports he commented on the length of our stay and asked if we were residents. We then presented our residence cards and the official wished us a good trip and said that we should always present our cards with our passports.  Actually,the 90 day within 180 day rule applies, generally, to tourists and anyone else who does not have a Schengen visa. The D7 is not a Schengen visa.

Under a temporary residency you still have to abide by the 90/180 day rule when traveling to a Schengen zone country. You should check this out with a solicitor or the Algarve consulate (also check out Tig James on Facebook, she has spent much time with legal entities on this), if you feel the info you are getting is contrary. The reason I say this, is you can get large fines or even refusal to enter in a non Portuguese country if they think you have over stayed previously. 

Now, in reality I don’t know how they can check if you have been outside Portugal longer than the 90/180 day rule, as you could have travelled back to Portugal and for all they know you were only in the other country for say 1 week, unless of course you are booking hotels or hire cars and thus it can be proven you have been in Schengen longer than 90/180 days. Even a flight does not prove as you could have travelled back to PT using other transport.

Also a caveat from me is that I don’t know the D7 piece as we were here before Brexit and thus got our residency under the withdrawal agreement.

Thank you for this reply, I just saw Tig on a podcast where Portuguese temporary residents were detained at airports for problems with Schengen and residency issues and had to fly back to England to then get back to Portugal, so this is an issue worth working through with our lawyer if we need to be out more than 90 days in a Schengen country. The reason I’m asking is we hope to do a long pilgrimage through France and Italy to Rome which if done all at once could be 80 to 90 days, cutting it close. 

Thanks again for all the great advice and opinions 

Search Tig James on Facebook, there is a lot of information on several posts over last few years. Also there is much contradictory advice from people, if you want to be 100% contact the British consulate for the Algarve. For me, travelling from Tunis to Marseilles to get a connecting flight 2 hours later to Faro I was stamped in France, even though I showed my residency card. I under if you arrive in the EU (except your residency country) you will get stamped into the Schengen zone. The French border control did not care about my residency in Portugal, the stamp means nothing though, even SEF have said to ignore it, as we travelled immediately to Portugal. This is what I mean about the 90/180 rule for residents, there is no real way for them to police when I am not in Portugal even though that is the law apparently.