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My case is the following: I have Brazilian and Italian citizenships and I'm currently living in Germany, for over an year now. I plan to travel to Brazil this holiday, and unfortunately I don't have an Italian passport, only the Brazilian one. What makes it even worse is that the Italian consulate has an appointment ready only in January.

I'm thinking of traveling with my Brazilian passport and my Italian ID, but I'm wondering if that's going to be a problem for the authorities, as I theoretically don't have legal stand to stay in Europe as a Brazilian for a period longer than 3 months (tourism visa for Brazilians), and I'll have to use my Brazilian passport to enter the airplane.

I would like to know how dual citizenship works in this case, if as an Italian without a passport I'm allowed to reenter the European Union. Basically I do have a traveling document, but not a European one.

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If you only had your Brazilian passport, it would bring up some subtle questions about obligations when crossing the border, your rights as EU citizen, what you may or may not do with an expired passport, what the consequences might be in practice, etc. but in that case you don't have to worry about all that. A national ID card is enough, plain and simple.

You can use it to go through the exit border check, to enter the Schengen area, to establish your right to live in the EU and to satisfy German ID obligations (Ausweispflicht). I have done all this multiple times with mine and German and EU law actually state as much explicitly. As long as you can prove you are an Italian citizen, there can be no concern about any overstay or lack of stamps in your other passport. There is also no obligation to carry or hold an EU passport for EU citizens (as opposed to holding an official ID document in general, which can be mandatory in some countries and useful to establish your citizenship).

And your Brazilian passport will take care of entering Brazil and satisfying airline checks. In some rare cases (another user experienced that in Sweden), it seems border guards also want to see that you will be able to enter your destination before letting you exit the Schengen area but the Brazilian passport ought to take care of that as well (and I don't think German border guards care at all).

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    First-hand experience: When I flew to Turkey and Egypt for vacation, where my German ID card suffices to enter, I did not even have a passport, yet left the Schengen area.
    – Alexander
    Commented Aug 29, 2017 at 12:00
  • Thank you so much for the answer! I really appreciate the details! Now I'm much more relaxed ;)
    – Gabcvit
    Commented Aug 29, 2017 at 12:43
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    "I don't think German border guards care at all" - anecdotal evidence aside, I don't think any border guard cares or should care in general. Airlines usually care, but still only because if they let you on a plane and you get denied entry, they have to pay for transporting you back.
    – CompuChip
    Commented Aug 29, 2017 at 12:50
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    @CompuChip That, and the fines they have to pay if they somehow violated a law in bringing you over anyway.
    – Mast
    Commented Aug 29, 2017 at 13:56
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    @phoog Sadly not: although I've spoken to IATA for almost 3 years (with the sourcing manager being my dedicated contact) I get the impression that they wouldn't want to reveal who their sources in each country are, something I would really like to know for Dominica, Jordan and Tunisia as there's a matter in each where I'm 95% sure they've screwed up. After this, obviously, I'd like to know about Italy too: as well as e-Mailing my IATA contact, I also e-mailed the Italian MFA and MOI, none of which have replied to me. Only my IATA contact let me know that the mistake's been corrected
    – Crazydre
    Commented Nov 21, 2017 at 5:02

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