My wife and I will be traveling to Switzerland in June. My friend mentioned that I might need a travel visa. Will we need travel visas to enter Switzerland? We will not be going anywhere else besides Switzerland.
Thank you.
UPDATE:
My apologies. We are US citizens.
You may need to provide a little more information.
If you come from the US or EU I know that you do not need a visa to stay for less than 90 days.
Ask your friend why????? If you are a US citizen you can legally enter and stay in Switzerland for a max of 90 days out of the next 180 days.
Update - you need to listen to friends who have actually traveled to Europe.
He said the the US had imposed some new law requiring all visitors to have travel visas and in retaliation some countries were requiring the same of visiting US citizens. I just wanted to make sure the we weren't going to get a surprise when arrived in Zurich in June.
You cannot believe everything you read and hear. It is a half truth. Immigration, visas, etc., tend to be reciprocal. If US requires A for B country citizens then B will require the same of US citizens. Some of the recent political saber rattling has suggested that the US should impose more rules on foreign vistors. So they was some European discussion that said, "OK, you impose more rules, so will we." Nothing changed and it is very unlikely that anything would change. And if it did, there would be more than one newspaper article. So don't worry about it. Absolutely nothing will happen between now and June.
Another stunning example of misinformed " friends" giving discouraging advice to someone planning a trip off this continent.
Even if visa requirements were to be imposed on US citizens by the EU as a retaliatory measure, Switzerland is not a member of the EU and would not likely follow suit.
Lola,
What you say is not quite true. Switzerland is part of the Schengen area, which is a common passport area. Once you are in the Schengen area you can travel to any other Schengen area country without restriction. Any limits on being in the Schengen area (90 day in 180 limit, requirement to have a visa) apply to the Schengen area as a whole, including Switzerland.
The current row is because the USA still requires visas from citizens of some Schengen countries (for example Bulgarians) and refuses to drop this requirement. the Schengen treaty is "one for all and all for one", if a country imposes visas on any Schengen member, Schengen has to impose visas on citizens of that country. This row will run and run, but neither side really wants to impose a full visa requirement, as then the other side will and that will be a major bureaucratic requirement. It is a bit like the cold war, nobody wants to shoot first.
But, currently and for the foreseeable future, US citizens do not need a visa for Schengen countries if they are staying as a tourist for less than 90 days in 180.
