Are seasonal short term Schengen visas one time entry visas and what counts as entry and exit?

Question

I am a little confused… If a guest worker holds a 3 month seasonal work C visa and leaves via plane for say Dubai in the last week of their employment, can they still use the rest of their visa, even if its only a few days? For example by boarding a plane in Dubai for some other European country.

This is what friends, who have experience in the past keep telling me, that a Schengen visa, unless its a business invite, gives me the right to stay until the last day (unless I am fired). So I am leaving Dubai (losing the working visa there) going to EU for a 3 month contract and the company will buy me a ticket back to Dubai, however I won't have a visa or reason for being in Dubai. Only good thing is I could jump on another plane and go visit some other place, while my visa is still active.

Do seasonal workers visas even give the holder any kind of movement freedom, associated with Schengen? It does say Schengen on the visa and it does say "states", so without any exceptions, but from what I hear most countries, don't really apply these laws as they were once imagined.

Why would picking apples require me to have access from Romania to France?

Would it be "abuse" or any kind of no-no to do tourism on such a visa or visit friends? Can I just go to the airport, show my apple picking visa and ask to be let visit another country simply for fun? I can easily prove my intent of leaving Schengen as a whole on time, not overstaying my visa, etc. But I am confused on the basics.

Are entry counts relevant for any other visa than business C invite visa or is it pretty much always relevant? And does flying to Dubai (but not leaving transit) count as exit?

Answer 1

A Schengen short-stay visa gives you the right to whatever is stated on it. There are no special restriction applied to visas issued for business or work. In particular, it's definitely fine to enter or exit through another Schengen country or spend a few days elsewhere, as long as you stay within the scope of your visa (period of validity and duration of stay).

There are still a few issues you might run into:

• A visa is valid for a specific number of entries (1, 2, or MULTiple). This will be specified on the visa sticker itself. If it says 1, your visa will cease to be valid as soon as you exit Romania for Dubai and you cannot use it to return to the Schengen area.
• Completely changing your plans might be risky, especially on a single-entry visa but as long as you don't intend to do that and the tourism remains incidental, it should be fine (we have many questions about that, e.g. Can I use my Schengen visa for a completely different purpose and entry point?, Change of plans in Schengen visa or Can I change my itinerary and hotel reservation after getting a Schengen visa?).
• Border guards are entitled to evaluate the purpose of your visit and your intent to leave the area every time you enter. You say you can easily prove that but trying to enter towards the end of the validity of your visa, for an entirely different purpose, and without a permission to return where you come from (you wrote that you had a Dubai visa that won't be valid at the end of your stay), it might be harder than you think to avoid suspicion.

Because of this, it might be easier to just take a plane from Romania to wherever you want to go to and return to Dubai from that country instead of taking a round-trip to Dubai before your tourism visit.

Answer 2

To complement the answer of Relaxed on some of your questions:

Why would picking apples require me to have access from Romania to France?

That's the whole principle of the Schengen Area. It's as if it was a single country, for travel purposes (at least for short stays -- things are different for long stay visas). If you have a C visa, it may have been issued by Romania, but you can visit the rest of the Schengen Area, either on your way in or out, or as a side trip, as long as you respect the terms of your visa (start/end date, number of entries, duration, 90/180 rule, restrictions on what you can do, and, on the first entry, doing what you said you would on your application -- main destination and type of activity).

Note however that your work authorisation is a national matter. You are allowed to work in Romania only, not France or any other Schengen Area country. Go see the Eiffel Tower? No problem. Go pick apples in France? No, you'll need a French permit for that.

In theory there shouldn't be any checks at all between Schengen Area countries. In practice there are checks in a number of cases (especially these last few years), but as long as you have the right paperwork, they can't say much.

And does flying to Dubai (but not leaving transit) count as exit?

As soon as you fly from a Schengen Area country to another non-Schengen country, that counts as an exit (they will check and stamp your passport), and the subsequent return counts as an entry (again, check passport, stamp).

This is especially important for people with single-entry or dual entry visas would travel from one Schengen country to another with a connection outside Schengen (like in the UK, or Turkey, or the non-Schengen Balkan countries...): that counts as an exit+entry, which of course will not be possible with a single-entry visa, and will use up the two entries on a dual-entry visa.