UK to EU Immigration requirements - an oddity?

[talljules1]

Well, we're back from our first fly-cruise on the Beyond, and it was magnificent.  We noticed something odd - and wonder whether we missed something?!

 

We flew in to Rome Leonardo da Vinci from Manchester, transiting in Frankfurt.

 

There was no immigration on leaving the UK, or in Frankfurt (the gate we arrived at and the gate we departed from were side by side).  On landing in Rome we followed the signs from the gate to baggage reclaim (and saw no signs for immigration along the way).  Collected our bags, went through the exit and we were out of the airport!! No immigration! 

 

On the return trip from Barcelona (via Munich) there was no immigration in Barcelona. Again, no one other than the check in agent asked to see our passports, and that was to issue boarding cards.  In Munich our arrival and departure gates were in different parts of the terminal, and there was passport control in between.  There we did have to show our passports, and the immigration officer seemed surprised/perturbed by the lack of stamps.  (Want to see our residence cards - don't have one!).  In the end he was satisfied when we showed him the flight details for our journey into the EU. He didn't stamp our passports either!

 

Did we miss something in Frankfurt or Rome?  (If we did I am surprised the flow of the airport allowed us to just walk out of the airport!) Particularly interested in hearing from those who have flown into Rome from the UK recently , but suspect this might also affect people flying in from other countries too.

[Boycey]

Very odd. We are just back today too from a fly cruise originating in Italy, but we had to go through passport control in and out and got passports stamped, even in the chaos that is Marco Polo airport in Venice.

 

Something clearly went awry in your outbound trip, but at least it saved you the 'all passports' queue in Europe that is our new normal post Brexit. 

[Mark_T]

11 minutes ago, talljules1 said:

Did we miss something in Frankfurt or Rome?

Sounds like you missed something in Frankfurt, upon arrival on an international flight from a non-Schengen country, you should have been immigration cleared into the Schengen zone.

 

Once that was done there was no further need for immigration until you were leaving the Schengen zone in Munich, which is what you experienced.

[talljules1]

9 minutes ago, Mark_T said:

Sounds like you missed something in Frankfurt, upon arrival on an international flight from a non-Schengen country, you should have been immigration cleared into the Schengen zone.

 

Once that was done there was no further need for immigration until you were leaving the Schengen zone in Munich, which is what you experienced.

Sounds reasonable.  Our arrival and departure gates were side by side (no need to walk anywhere else in the terminal, and no one told us we would need to go through immigration so I guess that's how that happened).

[Mark_T]

15 minutes ago, talljules1 said:

Sounds reasonable.  Our arrival and departure gates were side by side (no need to walk anywhere else in the terminal, and no one told us we would need to go through immigration so I guess that's how that happened).

They probably just got the doors wrong on the route from the aircraft, you should not have been deposited into the departure zone from an arriving non-Schengen flight.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Mark_T