Why do passport validity rules exist?

Question

In theory, passport validity shouldn't be a big deal for travelers. Even if your passport expires during your travels, you can usually get a new passport very quickly from a consulate, and many countries allow one to travel back home on an expired passport. Logically this means that countries should require that passports are valid up to the expected date of departure, but not any longer. But in practice the rules are more stringent - for example in the Schengen area the rule is "day of departure + 3 months":

Passports must be valid for at least three months beyond your planned date of departure from the Schengen area .

Three months beyond the date of departure seems highly excessive, at least for citizens of countries such as the US where the local consulates are highly reliable. Why is this the case?

Answer 1

Both the question and answers seem a little confused about the purpose of these rules. They are not there for the convenience of international travellers, to deal with unexpected situations or make sure people do not get “stranded” and should not be evaluated from that perspective. Instead, they are about the ability of the receiving states to remove a person from their territory and return them to their country of citizenship.

Another answer rightly mentioned the readmission agreements some European countries have tried to force on African countries but it failed to clarify what those are really about or explicitly draw the obvious conclusion. All this is designed to facilitate forced removals and has very little to do with anyone's ability to voluntarily secure a new passport while travelling.

The thing is that as long as you are able to find the person's passport, it's much easier to ensure their country of citizenship will take them back. When a person doesn't have a passport, this requires obtaining a laissez-passer from the relevant consulate, which takes time and adds to the costs of a removal by prolonging detention. It also makes the outcome uncertain as people will hide or lie about their citizenship and consulates can be located far away or be slow and uncooperative.

In that context, requiring 3 to 6 months of additional validity is actually quite short but it's a way to give yourself a little bit of time to detect, notify, locate, detain, and remove people overstaying their visa without massively inconveniencing the type of international travellers you do want to attract. It's not an ironclad guarantee either as people will try to hide or ditch their passport when they are desperate to avoid removal but it is certainly more useful than merely requiring a passport that's only valid for the intended or allowed duration of stay.

Answer 2

Logically this means that countries should require that passports are valid up to the expected date of departure, but not any longer.

This is a form of a grace period to deal with unexpected situations.

Three months beyond the date of departure seems highly excessive, at least for citizens of countries such as the US where the local consulates are highly reliable.

The United States requires 6 months 'beyond the initial period of contemplated stay in the United States'.

Exceptions exist for some countries that allow their citizens to return with an expired passport.

• 9 FAM 403.9-3(B)(2) - Countries That Extend Passport Validity for an Additional Six Months After Expiration

Why is this the case?

The goal is to avoid peaple becoming stranded.

many countries allow one to travel back home on an expired passport.

And some countries are very uncooperative in allowing their own citizens back if their passport is not valid or refuse to issue replacements when lost.

The article below reports that Germany made official diplomatic complaints to 17 countries about this in 2016.

In the mean time Readmission Agreements have been made with many of them, but often does not work if the citizenship is in dispute (no or 'lost' passport).

2016-02-23: Flüchtlinge: Diese Staaten widersetzen sich Abschiebungen - WELT (in German)

---

• European Agreement on Regulations governing the Movement of Persons between Member States of the Council of Europe of 1957-12-13

  Article 5
  Each Contracting Party shall allow the holder of any of the documents mentioned in the list drawn up by it and embodied in the Appendix to this Agreement to re-enter its territory without formality even if his nationality is under dispute.

Answer 3

To add to the accepted answer: I think you are assuming too much. Think about passport of small countries.

Do the consular office of country X in country Y offer renewals? Note: it is a matter of country X not country Y, so country Y may not know all rules and all changes. And so you have a problem. And often passports are sent from abroad, so it takes time

Passports have a validity. So police should accept an expired passport? (In some European countries we had the 5 extra year validity). Note: if a traveler didn't have time (or just check) passport validity, why should such traveler do it in the foreign country. (but business travelers, trade agents, and may not stay enough long on home country).

Is it easy to reach a consular office? You do not find consular offices on all cities. On a large country it may be far away (assuming there are one in the country), and you may need to reach it in person (so not easy if you had an accident). E.g. Australia doesn't have consular office on all European countries.

Also tracking purpose: you enter with one passport number and exit with an other, so you may enter wrongly on illegal immigrant list (or just people to watch), so extra costs for nothing.

I think also a why not? may be an answer: cheap and safe measure. And if there is a reason (worker, tourism of nearby countries), the validity passport rule is lifted, as the 5 extra year in Europe (unrelated to EU rules). It doesn't seem that making travels easier is a priority on most countries.