You bought the stone farmhouse in the Dordogne before Brexit, when your British passport opened every border in Europe without a second glance. Since 1 January 2021 you are a third-country national in European Union law, and every trip to your own house is a short stay governed by the 90\/180-day rule: no more than 90 days of presence in the Schengen area within any 180-day period. The rule looks simple on a government website and turns brutal at a border post in Calais or at a police check near your village, because the count runs on a rolling window, every day spent in any Schengen country counts, and an overstay can end with a written refusal of entry, a ban on returning for up to three years, or an obligation to leave French territory (obligation de quitter le territoire fran\u00e7ais, universally shortened to OQTF) served by the prefecture (pr\u00e9fecture, the local office of the French State). British second-home owners are the population most exposed to this trap: you travel often, you stay long, you cross several Schengen countries on one trip, and you assume that owning the house gives you a right to be there. It does not. This guide explains how the count really works, which papers the border police (police aux fronti\u00e8res) may demand, what an overstay costs in practice, and, above all, how to challenge a refusal of entry or an OQTF before the administrative court (tribunal administratif), with the exact time limits that decide whether your appeal survives. The eight legal references below were verified word for word during this writing session: five articles of the Code on the Entry and Residence of Foreigners and the Right of Asylum (Code de l’entr\u00e9e et du s\u00e9jour des \u00e9trangers et du droit d’asile, universally called the CESEDA) and three recent decisions of the administrative appeal courts (cours administratives d’appel). Keep your passport stamps, your boarding passes and your prefecture letters from the first page to the last, because every procedure described here is won or lost on dated documents.<\/p>\n
The starting point is the British government’s own travel advice, which states the rule in one sentence: British citizens may enter the Schengen area, France included, and remain for up to 90 days in any 180-day period with no visa. Note the correction this article applies throughout: the proper term is visa-exempt travel, and the 180-day window is rolling, not fixed by calendar year. The same official page adds the sentence most second-home owners discover too late: Days spent in any Schengen country during the 180 days before travel all count toward the same 90 days. Every day you spent in France, Spain, Italy or any other Schengen country during the 180 days before each new entry eats into the same allowance of 90 days, and the clock does not reset on 1 January. A fortnight in Andalusia in March, Easter in the Dordogne, a wedding in Tuscany in June and a long summer at your French house can silently add up past 90 days by August, even though each trip felt short on its own. The European Commission provides an official short-stay calculator for exactly this reason, and you should run your real travel history through it before every departure, keeping a printout with your travel file. If you hold a French residence permit or a long-stay visa, the British guidance confirms that such permit-based stays sit outside the 90-day visa-exempt allowance, which is why owners who spend more than half the year in France should read our companion guide on the visitor card for British second-home owners rather than stretching the 90-day allowance until it breaks.<\/p>\n
French courts apply the count with mathematical strictness, and a Paris appeal decision shows how judges reconstruct presence from passport stamps. In a case about a passenger whose multiple-entry Schengen visa had been used for repeated long stays, the Administrative Appeal Court of Paris listed “trois s\u00e9jours cons\u00e9cutifs, du 20 octobre 2015 au 8 janvier 2016, du 13 janvier 2016 au 21 mars 2016, puis du 27 mars 2016 au 15 mai 2016”, three consecutive stays running from 20 October 2015 to 8 January 2016, from 13 January 2016 to 21 March 2016, then from 27 March to 15 May 2016, and held that “Une op\u00e9ration de calcul sommaire du d\u00e9compte de la dur\u00e9e globale des trois s\u00e9jours, excluant la p\u00e9riode ant\u00e9rieure au 18 novembre 2015, fait appara\u00eetre un total manifestement sup\u00e9rieur \u00e0 cinq mois, soit sup\u00e9rieur \u00e0 90 jours”, a rough calculation of the total length of the three stays, excluding the period before 18 November 2015, shows a total plainly above five months, hence above 90 days (CAA Paris, 7th chamber, 24 April 2019, No 18PA01274<\/a>). The court rejected the argument that detecting the expiry required elaborate mathematics: it was, in the court’s words, something “ce que pouvait ais\u00e9ment d\u00e9celer un agent d’embarquement form\u00e9 au contr\u00f4le des documents de voyage”, which a check-in agent trained in travel-document control could easily have detected. For a British owner, the moral is direct. Border officers and even airline staff are entitled to add up your stamps, and a judge will call that addition a simple calculation, not an unfair trap. Count your days before they do, trip by trip, within the rolling 180 days, and never assume that leaving Schengen for a weekend in London resets anything: only days physically outside the Schengen area pause the accumulation, and days already spent remain in the window for six months.<\/p>\n Stamps are evidence, and their legibility is your problem as much as the administration’s. In that same Paris decision, the airline argued that overlapping border stamps made verification impossible and that carriers hold no policing power, but the court answered that “les tampons appos\u00e9s sur le passeport de la passag\u00e8re ne se chevauchent pas et sont lisibles, de sorte qu’un examen normalement attentif aurait fait appara\u00eetre clairement les dates de ses entr\u00e9es et sorties de l’espace Schengen” (CAA Paris, 7th chamber, 24 April 2019, No 18PA01274<\/a>), the stamps in the passenger’s passport did not overlap and were legible, so a normally careful examination would have shown the dates of entry into and exit from the Schengen area clearly. Keep this passage in mind every time an officer stamps over an old stamp until the dates blur: photograph each stamp on the spot, keep every boarding pass, Eurotunnel booking, ferry ticket and fuel receipt, and keep bank statements showing where you actually were. Since late 2025 the Entry\/Exit System (EES) is replacing manual stamping with biometric registration, and the British guidance notes that the Entry\/Exit System is taking over from manual passport stamping for short stays, with biometric data possibly captured at each entry and exit Biometrics will make the count automatic and disputes about blurred stamps rarer, but during the transition both systems coexist, so keep the paper habit until the machine record is unquestionably complete. If the system ever records an entry without its matching exit, the French authorities may presume you overstayed, and it will be your boarding passes and receipts that rebut the presumption, not your ownership deed, which proves you own walls, not that you were elsewhere on a given date.<\/p>\n The French statute behind the border check is Article L311-1 of the CESEDA<\/a>, which provides that “Pour entrer en France, tout \u00e9tranger doit \u00eatre muni : 1\u00b0 Sauf s’il est exempt\u00e9 de cette obligation, des visas exig\u00e9s par les conventions internationales et par l’article 6, paragraphe 1, points a et b, du r\u00e8glement (UE) 2016\/399 du Parlement europ\u00e9en et du Conseil du 9 mars 2016 concernant un code de l’Union relatif au r\u00e9gime de franchissement des fronti\u00e8res par les personnes (code fronti\u00e8res Schengen)”, to enter France, every foreigner must hold, unless exempted, the visas required by international conventions and by Article 6(1)(a) and (b) of Regulation (EU) 2016\/399 of 9 March 2016 establishing a Union Code on the rules governing the movement of persons across borders (Schengen Borders Code). British citizens are exempt from the visa itself but not from the other entry conditions in Article 6 of that regulation: a valid passport, justification of the purpose and conditions of stay, sufficient means of subsistence, and no alert in the Schengen Information System (syst\u00e8me d’information Schengen, the shared European database of alerts for refusal of admission). The British guidance lists what French border control may demand in practice: travellers may be asked for travel insurance covering emergency costs, evidence of sufficient money for the stay, proof of accommodation and a return or onward ticket. For a second-home owner, proof of accommodation means your titre de propri\u00e9t\u00e9 (title deed) or latest taxe fonci\u00e8re bill (the French local property tax), proof of means means recent bank statements, and the return ticket means a dated Eurotunnel or ferry booking, not a vague intention to drive back one day. Carry originals and keep copies outside the car, because a refusal of entry is notified in writing on the spot, and the documents you show or fail to show at that moment become the file the judge will read later.<\/p>\n A refusal of entry (refus d’entr\u00e9e) is a written, reasoned administrative decision served at the border, not a verbal instruction to turn around. The French public service explains that every refusal of entry must be set out in a written decision that states its reasons, and that the decision is formally notified and lists the person\\u2019s rights, with the further guarantee that both the decision and the statement of rights must be given in a language the person understands At the beginning of the procedure you must state which language you understand and whether you can read it; if you refuse to answer, French is used. Read the decision immediately, check which box is ticked, and photograph every page before signing anything, because the stated ground dictates your entire defence: lack of valid documents, insufficient means, no proof of accommodation, an alert in the Schengen Information System, or, most commonly for British owners, exceeding the 90-day allowance. If you are stopped at an airport or seaport rather than at the Channel Tunnel, the same official page warns that at an airport or seaport, the person served with a refusal may insist on not being sent back before the end of one clear day, meaning the day after arrival at midnight, the one-clear-day rule (d\u00e9lai d’un jour franc) that buys you time to contact a lawyer and prepare an appeal instead of being put on the next flight. Use that day actively: call counsel, gather your stamp photographs and calculator printout, and identify the exact ground you will contest, because once the day expires without an appeal, removal can proceed.<\/p>\n The 90-day ground deserves special attention because it produces the harshest misunderstandings. Many owners believe that a valid passport, a house, and money are enough, forgetting that exceeding the authorised stay is itself a standalone ground for refusal even when every document is genuine. The British guidance is blunt about the consequence: overstaying the 90-day visa-exempt allowance can lead to exclusion from Schengen countries for up to three years A ban of up to three years means missing not one summer but several, with a mortgage, insurance and garden still running in your absence, and it is recorded in systems that other Schengen countries consult, so the sanction follows you to Spain and Italy as well. The same page gives the only safe instruction for owners who realise mid-stay that the count has slipped: travellers who cannot get back to the United Kingdom before the allowance runs out are told to contact the nearest French prefecture Go to the prefecture of the d\u00e9partement where your house sits before the 90th day, with your passport, your calculator record, proof of the house and an explanation in writing, and ask what procedure applies to your situation rather than waiting for a police check to decide it for you. Owners who present themselves voluntarily with a file are treated differently from owners caught at a roadside control with no papers, and the prefecture visit creates a dated record of good faith that later helps before the judge if an OQTF is nevertheless issued.<\/p>\n Alerts in the Schengen Information System are the second great cause of refusals that surprise British travellers. An alert for the purposes of refusal of admission (signalement aux fins de non-admission) can follow an earlier removal measure, an unexecuted OQTF, or a ban on returning, and it remains visible to border officers across Schengen until it is deleted. A June 2025 decision of the Administrative Appeal Court of Nantes shows the mechanism: a foreigner controlled by the border police at Saint-Malo, already subject to earlier unexecuted removal orders, asked the court, among other things, to order deletion of his Schengen alert, and the prefect defended an OQTF issued “sur le fondement des 1\u00b0, 4\u00b0 et 6\u00b0 de l’article L. 611-1 du code de l’entr\u00e9e et du s\u00e9jour des \u00e9trangers et du droit d’asile”, on the basis of paragraphs 1, 4 and 6 of Article L611-1 of the CESEDA (CAA Nantes, 3rd chamber, 6 June 2025, No 24NT03604<\/a>). The details of that case concern another nationality, but the machinery is identical for a British owner with an old unexecuted measure: the alert survives, the border officer sees it, and entry is refused before any discussion of your house or your means. If you have ever received an OQTF, an expulsion order or a return ban and did not formally execute it, assume an alert may exist, ask a lawyer to verify your situation before travelling, and never attempt to re-enter on the quiet through a different border post, because each detected attempt aggravates the file and each new measure extends the exclusion.<\/p>\n Preparation is therefore a file, not a feeling. For every trip, assemble a dated folder, paper and digital: passport valid well beyond the return date, title deed or recent property tax bill, travel insurance certificate covering medical and hospital costs including repatriation, three months of bank statements proving sufficient means, return booking, the short-stay calculator printout for the rolling 180 days, and, if you hold one, your residence permit or long-stay visa. Add the prefecture’s receipt (r\u00e9c\u00e9piss\u00e9) for any pending application and the contact details of a lawyer who answers within hours, because appeals against border measures run in hours and days, not weeks. Tell anyone travelling with you where the folder is, since a refusal can separate a couple at the border post, and brief them on the one-clear-day rule so nobody signs a waiver of it under stress. Owners who arrive with this folder usually pass; owners who arrive with only a passport and the keys to the house are the ones this article is written for, and the second part explains what happens when the check goes wrong.<\/p>\n Once the 90 days are exceeded, the prefecture can issue an OQTF, and the statute lists overstay among its standard cases. Article L611-1 of the CESEDA<\/a> opens with the principle: “L’autorit\u00e9 administrative peut obliger un \u00e9tranger \u00e0 quitter le territoire fran\u00e7ais lorsqu’il se trouve dans les cas suivants”, the administrative authority may require a foreigner to leave French territory where one of the listed cases applies. Paragraph 2 targets precisely the second-home owner who stayed too long: “L’\u00e9tranger, entr\u00e9 sur le territoire fran\u00e7ais sous couvert d’un visa d\u00e9sormais expir\u00e9 ou, n’\u00e9tant pas soumis \u00e0 l’obligation du visa, entr\u00e9 en France plus de trois mois auparavant, s’est maintenu sur le territoire fran\u00e7ais sans \u00eatre titulaire d’un titre de s\u00e9jour”, a foreigner who entered under a now-expired visa or, where no visa is required, entered France more than three months earlier and remained without holding a residence permit. Since British citizens are not subject to the visa requirement for short stays, remaining in France beyond three months without a residence permit or long-stay visa falls squarely within this paragraph, and the prefecture does not need to prove bad faith, fraud or danger: the calendar plus the absence of a permit is enough. Paragraph 1 covers the companion situation of entry that cannot be shown to be lawful, so keep your entry evidence even after admission, because an owner first admitted without difficulty can still receive an OQTF months later after a check reveals the overstay.<\/p>\n The OQTF normally grants a voluntary departure period, and the current rule is thirty days. Article L612-1 of the CESEDA<\/a> states that “L’\u00e9tranger faisant l’objet d’une d\u00e9cision portant obligation de quitter le territoire fran\u00e7ais dispose d’un d\u00e9lai de d\u00e9part volontaire de trente jours \u00e0 compter de la notification de cette d\u00e9cision”, a foreigner subject to an OQTF has a voluntary departure period of thirty days from notification of the decision. The same article allows the authority, exceptionally, to grant a longer period where individual circumstances require it, and to extend the period granted, with written notice of the extension. Thirty days is short for an owner with a house to secure: arrange the garden, the insurance, the post, the car left in the barn, and the return channel crossing, all while the appeal clock described below is already running. Request an extension in writing immediately if health, a dependent’s school term or urgent works on the house justify it, attaching medical certificates or tradesmen’s invoices rather than general statements, because extensions are granted on documented individual circumstances, not on affection for the house. Note carefully that the voluntary period and the appeal period run simultaneously, so leaving within thirty days does not preserve any right, and appealing does not automatically extend the departure period: the two tracks must be managed together from the day of notification.<\/p>\n Where no voluntary period is granted, the sanction hardens automatically into a return ban. Article L612-6 of the CESEDA<\/a> provides that “Lorsqu’aucun d\u00e9lai de d\u00e9part volontaire n’a \u00e9t\u00e9 accord\u00e9 \u00e0 l’\u00e9tranger, l’autorit\u00e9 administrative assortit la d\u00e9cision portant obligation de quitter le territoire fran\u00e7ais d’une interdiction de retour sur le territoire fran\u00e7ais”, where no voluntary departure period has been granted, the authority attaches to the OQTF a ban on returning to French territory. The effects of the ban end, at the expiry of a period set by the authority, “qui ne peut exc\u00e9der cinq ans \u00e0 compter de l’ex\u00e9cution de l’obligation de quitter le territoire fran\u00e7ais, et dix ans en cas de menace grave pour l’ordre public”, which may not exceed five years from enforcement of the OQTF, and ten years in the event of a serious threat to public order. For a British owner, even a one-year ban, the duration imposed in the Nantes case discussed below, means a year of empty house, uncut hedges, frozen pipes in winter and insurance complications, plus the Schengen-wide visibility of the measure. The Nantes decision confirms that courts uphold such combinations: the prefect had “oblig\u00e9 \u00e0 quitter le territoire fran\u00e7ais sans d\u00e9lai, a fix\u00e9 le pays de destination et lui a fait interdiction de retour sur le territoire fran\u00e7ais pour une dur\u00e9e d’un an”, required the foreigner to leave French territory without delay, fixed the country of destination and imposed a one-year ban on returning to French territory, and the court closed with “Article 1er : La requ\u00eate de M. B… est rejet\u00e9e” (CAA Nantes, 3rd chamber, 6 June 2025, No 24NT03604<\/a>), Article 1: Mr B’s application is dismissed. An OQTF without a voluntary period is therefore the scenario to avoid at all costs, and it is typically imposed where the prefecture considers there is a risk of absconding, where false statements were made, or where an earlier measure was never executed, all behaviours fully within an owner’s control.<\/p>\n Beyond the OQTF itself, removal (\u00e9loignement) can follow mechanically if no appeal is lodged or if the appeal fails. The public service states the sequence plainly: after describing the right of appeal, it warns that without an appeal, or where the judge dismisses it, the person is forcibly removed from France Forced removal means escorted to the aircraft or the Tunnel, an enforcement stamp in the file, and in practice the near-certainty of a fresh alert and a fresh ban. The financial and human cost dwarfs the price of a timely appeal: a week’s\u0131ml\u0131k? No, a week’s legal work and a return ticket bought voluntarily cost a fraction of an enforced removal followed by years of exclusion from your own house. This is also why the British guidance pushes owners toward the prefecture before the limit expires rather than toward concealment afterwards. Once the OQTF is notified, the only question is the appeal, its deadline, and its form, which the next section sets out step by step.<\/p>\n Start with the refusal of entry, because its procedure is the fastest and the most misunderstood. The public service confirms that an annulment action against the refusal may be filed before the administrative court, the recours en annulation before the tribunal administratif, and adds the emergency track: an urgent interim application to the judge (r\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9-libert\u00e9), the emergency track that asks the court to safeguard a fundamental liberty while the case is examined. In practice the two are combined: the annulment action attacks the legality of the refusal, while the urgent application asks the judge to suspend removal in the meantime, and the official page states the protection that makes the combination effective: removal is suspended until the judge rules on the appeal, and, for the urgent track, on the emergency track, removal is likewise suspended until the ruling, which the judge must give within two days Forty-eight hours is the heartbeat of the whole procedure: file within the one-clear-day period, ask explicitly for suspension of removal, state the language you understand, and attach the calculator printout, the stamp photographs and the proof of means and accommodation that the border post allegedly ignored. Grounds that succeed are concrete, not rhetorical: a miscount of the 90 days demonstrated day by day, stamps misread by the officer, a residence permit or Withdrawal Agreement card the officer overlooked, as our guide on renewing the Withdrawal Agreement card explains for owners who already hold one, or a missing statement of reasons on the written decision. Grounds that fail are equally predictable: ownership of the house presented as a residence right, general complaints about Brexit, or means and insurance produced for the first time before the judge without explanation of why they were absent at the border.<\/p>\n Turn now to the OQTF, whose challenge runs before the same court but under its own articles and, above all, its own deadlines. Article L614-1 of the CESEDA<\/a> provides that “La d\u00e9cision portant obligation de quitter le territoire fran\u00e7ais ainsi que la d\u00e9cision relative au s\u00e9jour, la d\u00e9cision relative au d\u00e9lai de d\u00e9part volontaire et l’interdiction de retour sur le territoire fran\u00e7ais qui l’accompagnent, le cas \u00e9ch\u00e9ant, peuvent \u00eatre contest\u00e9es devant le tribunal administratif selon la proc\u00e9dure pr\u00e9vue \u00e0 l’article L. 911-1”, the OQTF together with any accompanying residence decision, voluntary-departure decision and return ban may be challenged before the administrative court under the procedure laid down in Article L911-1. The crucial point, confirmed by a 2022 Lyon appeal decision, is that the fifteen-day time limit for challenging an OQTF with a voluntary departure period is a clear-day period (d\u00e9lai franc). The court stated the general principle that “Sauf texte contraire, les d\u00e9lais de recours devant les juridictions administratives sont, en principe, des d\u00e9lais francs, leur premier jour \u00e9tant le lendemain du jour de leur d\u00e9clenchement et leur dernier jour \u00e9tant le lendemain du jour de leur \u00e9ch\u00e9ance, et les recours doivent \u00eatre enregistr\u00e9s au greffe de la juridiction avant l’expiration du d\u00e9lai”, unless otherwise provided, time limits for applications to the administrative courts are, in principle, clear-day periods, running from the day after the triggering event until the day after the day of expiry, and applications must be registered at the court’s registry before the limit expires, and concluded that “ce d\u00e9lai de quinze jours doit \u00eatre regard\u00e9 comme un d\u00e9lai franc”, this fifteen-day period must be regarded as a clear-day period (CAA Lyon, 2nd chamber, 12 May 2022, No 21LY01070<\/a>). In that case the prefecture’s order had been notified on 16 February 2021, the application reached the registry on 1 March 2021, the lower court had rejected it as out of time, and the appeal court annulled that rejection and remitted the case, because the application had in fact been lodged within the fifteen clear days. For a British owner served with an OQTF at the prefecture or by post, the lesson is arithmetic and discipline: day one is the day after notification, day fifteen shifts to the day after expiry, and the application must be registered, not merely posted, before midnight of the last day. Miss it by a day and the OQTF becomes final whatever its defects; meet it and every defect, from a miscounted stay to an unexamined personal situation, can be argued.<\/p>\n On the substance of OQTF appeals, British owners should plead in layers, from procedure to proportionality. First, external legality: was the decision signed by a competent authority, does it state reasons addressing your specific situation, were you heard or given the chance to submit observations, and does the notification mention the remedies and time limits. Second, the facts: rebuild the 90-day count day by day with stamps, tickets and the Commission calculator, because prefectures do miscount, particularly where trips straddled the EES transition or where a stay under a previous long-stay visa was wrongly added to the visa-exempt allowance. Third, personal and family circumstances: the length of ownership, the centre of your children’s schooling, medical treatment underway in France, and the consequences of a ban on the maintenance of the property, all documented, not asserted. Fourth, proportionality of the return ban: where a voluntary period was refused, attack the refusal specifically, since the ban flows from it, and show roots, guarantees of departure such as a return ferry booking and professional ties in the United Kingdom, and a clean record. The Nantes case is the mirror warning of what happens when none of this is available: repeated unexecuted measures, a border-police control, an OQTF without delay and a one-year ban, all upheld on appeal. Present yourself as the opposite file, cooperative, documented and rooted on both sides of the Channel, and give the judge the papers that make a suspension or annulment easy to write.<\/p>\n Two practical warnings close the procedural picture. First, never ignore an OQTF and hope it fades: unenforced measures generate alerts, alerts generate refusals at the next entry, and each cycle lengthens the next ban, exactly the spiral the Nantes file illustrates from 2017 to 2025. If you receive an OQTF, either execute it within the voluntary period and keep the proof of exit, boarding passes and Eurotunnel records, or challenge it within the fifteen clear days and comply with the court’s directions while the case runs. Second, coordinate the immigration file with the property file: inform your insurer of long absences, mandate a neighbour or a gardien in writing, photograph the house on departure, and keep the OQTF, the appeal receipt and the court’s decision with the house file, because a future buyer, a future tenant or a future prefecture will ask what happened during the gap. Owners who treat the border incident as a legal file to be closed, rather than an embarrassment to be hidden, recover their rhythm of Channel crossings fastest, and the conclusion gathers the whole method into a checklist you can keep in the glovebox.<\/p>\n Brexit did not take your French house, but it put every journey to it under a stopwatch: 90 days in any rolling 180, counted across the whole Schengen area, proved by stamps and now by biometrics, and enforced by officers who add faster than travellers expect. Count before you travel with the official calculator, carry the folder that proves purpose, means, accommodation and return, and present yourself at the prefecture before the ninetieth day if the stay threatens to overflow. If the border post nevertheless serves a written refusal, invoke the one-clear-day rule, demand the decision in a language you understand, and combine the annulment action with the urgent application so that no removal occurs before the judge decides within forty-eight hours. If the prefecture serves an OQTF, diary the fifteen clear days from the day after notification, register the challenge at the tribunal administratif before expiry, and plead procedure, calendar, personal circumstances and proportionality of any return ban in that order. The five CESEDA articles and the three appeal decisions cited here are the same weapons French lawyers use, and they work for British owners exactly as for anyone else, because the 90\/180 rule, the voluntary departure period and the clear-day appeal limit apply without regard to nationality or to ownership of the house. Keep the stamps, keep the tickets, keep the calculator printouts, and never let a measure go unanswered: in this field, the file that is documented, dated and challenged on time wins, and the file that relies on the house keys alone loses.<\/p>\n Telephone consultation: 80 EUR TTC with an avocat of the firm within 48 hours. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22<\/a> or write via the contact page<\/a>. Bring your passport stamps, your 90-day count, the refusal or OQTF letter and your proof of house and means so the advice starts from your papers, not from generalities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" British second-home owners face the 90\/180-day Schengen rule at every French border crossing. How to count your days, which papers to carry, and how to challenge a refusal of entry or an OQTF.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":251031309,"featured_media":16311,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kj_source_type":"","_kj_official_id":"","_kj_official_url":"","_kj_judilibre_id":"","_kj_jur":"","_kj_lieu":"","_kj_chambre":"","_kj_rg":"","_kj_date":"","activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":""},"categories":[80312,80314],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2129555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-british-desk","category-decryptage"],"yoast_head":"\nB. Which Papers Must You Show at the French Border and What Triggers a Refusal of Entry?<\/h3>\n
II. What Happens If You Overstay and How Do You Challenge a Refusal of Entry or an OQTF?<\/h2>\n
A. What Does Overstaying Your 90 Days Really Cost: OQTF, Return Ban and Removal?<\/h3>\n
B. How Do You Challenge a Refusal of Entry or an OQTF Before the Administrative Judge?<\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
Need a quick opinion on your case.<\/h2>\n