As this (and other threads) shows, there is no simple answer for Europe, nor can one be produced whose validity will be longer than your next trip abroad 
Let me have a go anyway…
1. Schengen is about immigration it says nothing about customs.
Yes but in reality it is hardly relevant because for most practical purposes both are done by the same people.
2. Countries can suspend Schengen or have special rules for example demand use of an Airport of entry for customs purposes.
As Bismarck said, politics is the art of the possible. Bullfighting in Spain? This is a good starting point
3. Customs and immigration (C&I) duties may be combined but this should not be assumed
Usually they are everywhere in the world; only in Europe are these separated but not often.
4. C&I may actually be delegated to an airport employee but this should never be assumed just because they examined your passport.
Trade unions would go berserk.
5. Be present at the time advised to C&I. For departure if they do not appear you are at risk if you depart early. For arrival you should remain in your aircraft with the door closed till the ETA you provided. Although these restrictions are rarely applied, they can be.
There is this but some countries ignore it, all countries would love to ignore it, and France is definitely starting to ignore it
There is also this whose implementation varies, but it is safe to assume you need to be present AT filed EOBT and the benefit of the 15 min / 30 min early dep option for IFR / VFR is not available if C+I is supposed to be processed.
6. A flight plan may be visible to C&I but it does not form part of the C&I process
Mostly that is correct. It may differ at big airports (LKPR unofficially, Sweden officially apparently)
7. Customs have considerable powers. They can and occasionally have imposed VAT and import duty on the value of the aircraft
Especially if you p1ss them off, but that is true everywhere. Carrying a 9mm and being unable to use it must be awfully frustrating!
8. Pre loading luggage carries risk. The obligation is to present it to customs
I don’t understand. You are supposed to present only VATable/dutiable goods.
9. There is some obligation to be the owner of the aircraft or carry documentation showing that you are authorised to use it. N registered aircraft held in a trust may be asked for this.
10. In the UK submitting a GAR fulfils most obligations. While Border Force (BF) seem relatively relaxed compared with some countries you should not depart early or arrive early and leave your aircraft.
I agree – see above about the silly French behaviour at Avignon.
11. It is prudent where times are provided directly to C&I to be conservative and wait as necessary to accommodate any differences between predicted and actual arrival and departure times.
I think you need to be around at EOBT. The ETA is obviously not possible and their obligation is to track the flight and turn up appropriately. I’ve never had a problem on the ETA front.
12. It is prudent to be aware of airfields on your route that have permanent customs in case of diversion.
Very few such airports in Europe, to be useful for GA.
In the UK there is an obligation to have an approved airfield as your alternate or inform border force
Yes; you land and phone them.
13. Experience indicates that special care is needed in Germany and Switzerland
Yes but read the entire thread since there have been changes.
14. A UK citizen has an obligation to have their passport controlled. It is unclear what is acceptable if C&I properly notified fail to appear but as a minimum retain proof of your best efforts to be compliant.
Not heard of that. The passport is not stamped. If you are trying to set up a foreign domicile you need to do “something” for sure.
The Commission may issue an opinion regarding the necessity of the measure and its proportionality but cannot veto a Member State’s decision to reintroduce border control.
Brussels could not care less what the locals do at say LFBH (to pick one of the more infamous examples).
They can’t do that either. Greece does do it and refer to something which is possibly a legal loophole.
Brussels could not care less, same as it could not care less about the Greek “port of entry” sham system, having signed schengen in the days of freely flowing €€€€€ euphoria.
But they can take the matter to the ECJ.
Hahaha
Probably as many opinions as there are members on this board, but why not
Rate2 wrote:
Countries can suspend Schengen
Only according to Peter. Never heard of this any other place Checking passports is perhaps in most cases according to Schengen rather than the opposite. In Norway there is no requirement to carry any ID card, even going to/from Sweden. However, there was a time in the midst of terror happening some years back when we were asked to carry identification paper/passports when crossing over to/from Sweden. This was according to Schengen AFAIK.
Rate2 wrote:
Customs and immigration (C&I) duties may be combined but this should not be assumed
Two entirely different things. Customs is about goods and handled by customs officers/customs office. Immigration is handled by police, in some cases a special police department, in other cases not. It may appear as the same thing many places, but it’s not.
Rate2 wrote:
C&I may actually be delegated to an airport employee but this should never be assumed just because they examined your passport.
Never heard of that either. Customs is only customs officers, immigration is police. Whatever some other person want to check, has nothing to do with customs or immigration.
Rate2 wrote:
For arrival you should remain in your aircraft with the door closed till the ETA you provided
That looks like an extremely strict interpretation. What it usually say is “do not leave the aircraft” (as in do not abandon the aircraft and take the train to the nearest town).
Rate2 wrote:
A flight plan may be visible to C&I but it does not form part of the C&I process
Often it does.
Rate2 wrote:
They can and occasionally have imposed VAT and import duty on the value of the aircraft
Again. I have only read about this on this board. I prescribe this to misunderstandings and ignorance. Purchasing an aircraft abroad, flying it back home without noticing customs is a very stupid thing to do for instance.
Rate2 wrote:
Pre loading luggage carries risk. The obligation is to present it to customs
This is not correct. The obligation is to inform customs about goods that needs some kind of customs declaration, and to not bring illegal stuff etc.
Rate2 wrote:
There is some obligation to be the owner of the aircraft or carry documentation showing that you are authorised to use it
In general no. Authorized by who? Why should customs/immigration care? Not that they won’t, but it’s not their business. But then again, if you are not authorized to use it, the insurance is not valid, and this is a normal police case, and since the police take care of immigration…
Rate2 wrote:
It is prudent where times are provided directly to C&I to be conservative and wait as necessary to accommodate any differences between predicted and actual arrival and departure times.
Never experienced this. But, it depends on the airport. At official customs/immigration airports, this should be no issue.
Rate2 wrote:
Experience indicates that special care is needed in Germany and Switzerland
I cannot imagine that this “experience” is based on nothing but misunderstandings/ignorance as explained above. On the other hand, customs officers are seldom “nice guys”. They don’t take ignorance as an excuse for anything whatsoever. It’s your responsibility to follow the law, and if you don’t, you may end up in deep shit indeed. It’s as simple as that. In the news some days ago there was an older German married couple who brought 11 kilo gold through a unmanned border crossing. They sold their house in Germany when retired, to live the rest of their lives Norway, and the gold was a major part of their finances. Unfortunately some “nice guys” were hiding behind the bushes and stopped them. They said they simply followed the GPS, and always travelled on smaller roads. They said they also had filled out all the forms for the gold. Sounds plausible to me, but the point is, you cannot simply cross the border with several kilos of undeclared gold. The irony is that if they have used a manned crossing, they would prob 99.9999 not have been stopped by those “nice guys” (why gold anyway? is it a German thing to sell everything and exchange it for gold when retiring ?)
Peter wrote:
Yes but in reality it is hardly relevant because for most practical purposes both are done by the same people.Not really, it depends on the country and within Switzerland, even on the canton.
To give some examples:What it usually say is “do not leave the aircraft” (as in do not abandon the aircraft and take the train to the nearest town).Exactly. I don’t know any place in Europe, where you should remain in your aircraft until ETA or arrival of officials, like in the US or Canada. But you should of course remain close to the aircraft, like in Switzerland, with designated customs parking areas on smaller airfields with customs O/R.
The reason for this archaic situation with VFR is fairly obviously that government is uncomfortable with people flying themselves around unmonitored and wants to track them.But that is also the case for the US. I also need a flight plan when crossing the border with Canada (in both directions), even though both countries are allies. Staying within the US, a VFR flight plan is optional. Nothing different compared to most European countries, where national flights also don’t need any pre-filed flight plan. Remember (as others said): European countries are just as sovereign, as the US and Canada. Yes, many countries gave up a bit of sovereignty by joining the EU, but each country is free to leave (see UK) and may insist on its own special rules. Besides: The US wants you to file an AIPS upon leaving by GA, while driving by road, you don’t have to file anything upfront and there aren’t any exit checks. The US and Canada are not easier or better at all in this regard. You guys just have the huge advantage of having a massive country.
When I said “same people” I meant they turn up as a group.
Job demarcation rules mean that they will always be separate. Even if it is 1 policeman
As re “free to leave” I don’t think so. Not any more.
I may misquote but ‘perfection is the enemy of the good’. Anything I included in the summary stems from one of many posts I read. I have no doubt there are simplifications and perhaps errors. Anything that is said could indeed change. No one suggests not bothering with the weather forecast because it may not be entirely accurate. At some point if you want to fly you make a decision based on some sort of risk analysis. I try reasonably hard to be both legally compliant and go places. After several years of effort my own strip is Border Force approved but I have failed to persuade the CAA to allocate an ICAO identifier. I have managed to fly GA to Africa, Pakistan, South America, USA, the Caribbean, Israel, Central America and various Arab states. The only countries where I have come close to arrest or seen the wrong end of an automatic weapon were in Europe. I have never once been asked for a bribe. The only time I have been deliberately swindled by handlers was in Europe. The most aggressive border controls were in the USA. The most ludicrously labyrinthine bureaucracy was in Australia. The only ramp checks France. Just my experience.
I would like to think that on home territory I understood the issues. I am grateful for the lively input here and will go ahead and do my best to produce a helpful if less than definitive list. Written in full I will qualify some points and emphasise the potential for change.
Like I said before many times, the most important thing to tell anyone new to this game to brief from the AIP and NOTAMs.
There are little details e.g. in France “police” = immigration.
There are rare cases of also having to find the airport website, and understanding that the times on that may well be local, not UTC.
Peter wrote:
Like I said before many times, the most important thing to tell anyone new to this game to brief from the AIP and NOTAMs.
This was my advice until Covid, too. Now I add check border police regulations to the list, as there may be more to travelling than written in AIP und NOTAM. My actual nightmare, planning a cross border trip in summer with a non-EU-citizen PAX on tourist visa … man, what a mess of regulations!
Covid regs are finished now surely. Is there any hangover? What is “border police”? There is “only”
Remember (as others said): European countries are just as sovereign, as the US and Canada. Yes, many countries gave up a bit of sovereignty by joining the EU, but each country is free to leave (see UK) and may insist on its own special rules.
Again, the rules for crossing continental European borders on the ground are akin to crossing between US states. In the air there is an irrational difference.
The reason for the treaty situation on the ground is that given the very small size of the adjacent countries, anything else with modern ground transportation would be ridiculous, and in fact was ridiculous when I first started traveling in Europe. Given the even higher speed of light aircraft, the current situation with presubmitted flight plans etc to cross borders is even more ridiculous, and archaic, today.
Silvaire wrote:
Again, the rules for crossing continental European borders on the ground are akin to crossing between US states. In the air there is an irrational difference.Just because it feels the same, doesn’t mean you can compare it in a 1:1 relation. Europe or the EU is simply not a USE.
The reason for the treaty situation on the ground is that given the very small size of the adjacent countries, anything else with modern ground transportation would be ridiculous, and in fact was ridiculous when I first started traveling in Europe.There might still be mobile checks around borders within Schengen and EU. To give an example: For many years, German customs were extremely active along the Dutch border due to the liberal drug policies in the Netherlands. On the ground, they’re allowed to stop you without any suspicion, within 30 km of each border. In the air, this is of course not possible, so they used (and might still use) flight plan data to randomly check arriving aircrafts from the Netherlands at small German aerodromes.
Given the even higher speed of light aircraft, the current situation with presubmitted flight plans etc to cross borders is even more ridiculous, and archaic, today.But you must have a general plan in the cockpit, right? If you call European ATC / FIS, they (mostly) want to know your departure and destination airfield. You can say “it’s a scenic flight” or “local flight”, but a “we don’t have a destination yet, we’ll see” would sound extremely unprofessional. They might even doubt if you did a proper flight preparation. So at least you must have a general idea of where to fly, and 99% of all pilots these days will plan a route in some kind of EFB, from where a flight plan is just an additional “push on a button” away.
