https://www.evz.de/en/shopping-internet/cash-payment-limitations.html
I understand you can keep as much cash as you want, you just can’t pay an amount above 10k or whatever limit is in your country.
Snoopy wrote:
I could have reached it by bus or cat
Says one flea to another: shall we walk home or do we go by cat? 
In my understanding, a watch worth 20 000 EUR or even 150 000 EUR is not a “cash equivalent”.
That’s not how the Germans see it. Arnold Schwarzenegger ran afoul of their rule some months ago and had an expensive watch confiscated. He had planned to give it away at some charity event in Austria. Don’t know how that was resolved in the end.
OK so basically €10k is the Customs limit intra-schengen
It’s not a limit. You can bring an unlimited amount cross border within EU and pay no customs, however, if asked then amounts over 10.000€ have to be declared.
Now that i think about it, i should also ask about the cash limits im supposed to comply with.
Now that Romania has officially joined Schengen in march, am i still under the government’s 5000 RON cash limit or am i under Schengen’s 10000 euro limit ?
Schengen is for immigration. EU is for customs. What you refer to as “limits” is actually a threshold for declaration when asked by customs intra EU.
Exiting/entering EU, it is different.
That’s not how the Germans see it. Arnold Schwarzenegger ran afoul of their rule some months ago and had an expensive watch confiscated.
Standard customs stuff when entering EU from third country, unrelated to cash equivalents. He didn’t declare the watch (excess of 430€ for air travelers >17 years) and didn’t pay duty + import VAT on it. He probably gave the customs dude an autograph on the way in instead.
If that’s right it is a crazy law that must be violated 100,000 times per day. Almost every tourist entering EU will carry more than 430 worth of belongings. Bizarre that an aircraft can enter on temporary admission but not personal effects? Is that really correct?
Personal belongings do not belong to that 430€ limit, otherwise you couldn’t even carry a laptop or smartphone with you. That 430€ limit is for new stuff, for example, if you buy a new watch abroad in a third-country and bring it back into the EU. Or if a relative from a third-country, brings a new smartphone with him into the EU, even if it’s a gift for you.
Customs may however always ask for payment details, in case they see something suspiciously expensive and new, for example a new-looking Rolex on your arm. A statement like “I bought this already in the EU” might not be sufficient. If you cannot prove where you bought it on the spot, customs can oblige you to pay a deposit, until you send them details of your purchase. This is a common practice at the land borders with duty-free zones like Samnaun in Switzerland or Livigno in Italy. And yes, customs officers are even undercover on the ski slopes, to catch you on your way back to Ischgl. There is no escape. 
Yes it is violated all the time, via normal personal effects exceeding the €430 or whatever. There is a slightly lower figure for GA, as was explained to me some months ago by UK Customs who met me at Shoreham. This goes back decades. When I used to travel to the US in the late 1980s I used to carry receipts for my camera gear, so I could prove I didn’t buy it in the US. Same when going windsurfing to Lanzarote in the 1980s. In theory you still need that today.
AFAIK this has not changed in all those years. All that has changed is that Customs on EU border no longer bother to check personal effects on “normal” people. One reason for this might be that at many airports the extra-EU and intra-EU passengers are mixed in the same terminal, so the Customs officers standing around the Nothing to Declare exit and “casually looking at people” can’t tell if somebody has arrived from Switzerland or from France (talking pre-brexit here, for brevity). But I am fairly sure that if some footballer and his wife, loaded with bling as they like to be, turn up, they do get looked at.
Vehicles are different, as Lionel explained. It gets slightly weird, reportedly, between CH and DE where you can cross on a new €500 bike but if you are on a €7000 bike they will look at you. We did this in other threads.
Franz – your post immediately above confirms, I think, what I am saying, because how you you prove an item is not new? And if the burden of proof is on the traveller (which it must be, I think, especially in mainland-Europe law) then there cannot be a “personal effects exemption”. Such a thing would mean that anybody travelling with expensive stuff which looks like new would need to carry the purchase receipts. I recall various stories from years ago e.g. people arriving from Hong Kong would have often bought Swiss watches but way cheaper than in Switzerland. I know someone who did that in 2000. UK Customs reportedly had lists of popular Swiss watch brands showing which S/N ranges were shipped to which country, so if your Rolex S/N showed that Rolex shipped it to HK…
Hence I think that Customs have simply stopped bothering with normal travellers. If they did hit people, there would be many appeals as people later discover proofs of purchase, and it would be a mess.
The above is however purely for entering the EU border, not related to anything inside it. Lots of threads on aircraft VAT etc.
