Stamping Ordinance

Since you are now in Germany, I suppose you have also visited one office or the other to have this or that piece of paper stamped. I remember my time of enrollment at the university in Marburg, when the official had five rows with ten stamps to a row all stacked up in front of him. With the unerring ability of an eagle to catch the tiny fish in a stream way down below, that official knew practically blindfolded where any given stamp was. This article is about stamping your passport, whenever you cross the border of the Schengen Area.

January 2005, virtually unnoticed by everyone, the ordinance “(EU) No. 2133/2004 of the Council of December 13, 2004 to obligate the competent offices of the member states to systematically stamp passports of non-member states' citizens while passing an external border of the Schengen States and thereby changing regulations of Schengen Implementation Ordinance and the Common Handbook“ came into force.

This ordinance aims at having the possibility to determine by uncontestable facts how long a third-country foreigner has been in the country. The German authorities will now be able to monitor – by the stamps in your passport – how many days of the allowed 90 days without a visa you have been in Germany. They will now be reluctant to be believe that you “really were” out of the country unless the series of entry stamps in your passport prove your story. And if they do not, you will have to otherwise show – with documents – that you were in another country for some period.





Published on the old CMS: 2007/1/3
Read on the old CMS till November 2008: 219 reads