France- 3 or 6 months left on your passport?

[User5653218]

I can't quite follow the Eurostar guidance for passports. It says legal requirement of 3 months but the UK govt recommend 6 months, something about 90 days without a visa? I don't want to get this stupidly simple thing wrong.

DS and I are planning to travel to France in October but his passport expires in March, 5 months after we arrive home.

I guess we could renew now, he's 16 in 2 weeks time so we could wait and renew for 10 years but that would only give us 4 weeks to get the new passport.

How annoying. It was a bit of a sudden decision this weekend to try to get to Paris to meet friends but maybe it won't work out.

It needs to be -

• issued less than 10 years before you enter the country (Using "issue date")
• have at least 3 months on it before the "expiry date" on the date you leave

The 90 days is the consecutive period you can now stay in the EU without a visa, hence the passport should be stamped in and out.

So he'll be fine.

Travel documents for non-EU nationals - Your Europe (europa.eu)

Oh, the 90 days was confusing me. I wondered if that was an extra 90 days making it 6 months rather than 3.

Thank you