Leaving Schengen region to reset 90 days

Question

I have a friend who claims that you can leave the Schengen area for 1 night, and re-enter, to reset your 90 days. For example, an Australian could enter Europe and then go for a couple of nights holiday to Morocco, Andorra, or London (any place outside of Schengen), and then return to Paris and have the passport stamped for another 90 days stay in Europe. They swear by this and claim they know guys doing it for years. My understanding, which admittedly is just from reading online and not real-world experience, was that we could only spend 90 days out of any 180 days in the Schengen region.

I've also heard other people say, no, you can't do that and if you are caught overstaying then you can be banned from re-entering schengen region for 5 years. But, I've heard similar stories from several other people about leaving for 1 night making me think there is something to this story even if it's a loophole or a legal grey area (e.g. maybe the person checking at the border when you re-enter has to actually notice a previous stamp in your passport?)

So what are the real rules and facts about tourists staying in the Schengen region on these visa waiver agreements?

Answer 1

This explained reasonably well in the Wikipedia article. You can stay in the Schengen area for up to 90 days in a 180-day period either with a short-stay visa or with a visa waiver depending on your nationality. Beyond that, you need a long-stay visa.

There's a twist: 180-day periods are counted from the date of your first entry to Schengen, thus repeating every 6 months. So if you arrive in Schengen on January 1 and leave on March 30, you can't reenter until July 1. But if you spend one day on January 1, then come back on April 2nd, you can leave on June 30 and come back on July 1 to stay until September 30. In a sense, you can make a visa run, but only if it's exactly the right number of days since your first Schengen entry.

More precisely, the rule is Article 11 of the Schengen Convention:

The visa provided for in Article 10 may be:
(a) a travel visa valid for one or more entries, provided that neither the length of a continuous visit nor the total length of successive visits exceeds three months in any half-year, from the date of first entry;
(b) a transit visa authorising its holder to pass through the territories of the Contracting Parties once, twice or exceptionally several times en route to the territory of a third State, provided that no transit shall exceed five days.

Article 10 introduces the mutually-recognized Schengen short-stay visa, which can be valid for up to three months.

Thus the answer is no: you cannot make a visa run for Schengen. Your passport will be stamped and your name will be entered in a database, so if you try you run a good chance of being detected. You might get lucky, but you might also get fined and barred from entering the Schengen area for several years.