90/180 day rule with student resident permit, how strict it is applied

Question

I have a student residence permit valid for another 2 years from Germany, I am from Turkey, and my sister lives in Hungary. I visit her whenever I wish with a train and I never had a problem so far, I usually spend my summers with her. I recently learn about this 90/180 days rule applied even for residence permit residents. But the problem is I never had a passport control in trains (I use trains always to travel), and I do not work there or anything; we basically aim to spend quality family time.

By the rule, I might have 6 days left and we had a family gathering planned. This rarely happens once in a year. Should I take this so serious and leave, or stay for 10 days (4 days will be over 90 days period) and do not bother? I am pretty strict with rules and regulations, so I wanna know if bilateral agreement can be applied in my case. Do I need to go police or something to justify where I am everytime I visit my sister? I will leave directly after my family leaves. Would I get banned or penalty for this incase it would become a deal?

Answer 1

The rule is phrased that way because the creation of the Schengen area created a conundrum: You cannot expect all third-country residents to apply for a short-stay Schengen visa every time they cross an internal border, this would be extremely costly and serve no purpose since there is no border checks anymore. But you cannot formally allow all residence permit holders to reside everywhere in the Schengen area, this would contradict the notion that residence permit are still a national matter and open a backdoor to residence in any Schengen country.

So you have to set a limit and it's simply based on the Schengen agreement definition of short stays. Everything under 90 days is a Schengen (now EU) matter, everything above that is a national matter.

In actual fact, the rule isn't actively enforced and there is basically zero risk of any consequences. Its purpose is not to police family trips by students, it's to provide some legal cover to remove people who have a permit from one Schengen country, live full-time in another one (often working illegally) or come to the attention of the authorities in another way, especially if they are deemed “undesirable” (rough sleeping, petty criminality, etc.)

What does happen in those cases is that you are ordered to go back to the country where you do have a residence permit or, rarely, end up being removed by the local police to that country (e.g. physically escorted to a train or handed over to the authorities in your country of residence). Hungarian authorities have no way to invalidate your residence permit or ban you. The only (very theoretical) question is whether the German authorities would then act on any report that you overstayed in Hungary but it's hard to see a basis for that.