Passport problem!

[.Z.]

Wonder if any of you folks can help

Basically a friend and I want to go on a spur of the moment holiday pronto, one small problem is that their passport expires in January 2007, a lot of places need a passport valid for at least 6 months from now and the passport office is fully booked till next Tuesday which is no good.

The travel agent says the only place in Europe which we can travel to with less than 6 months validity is parts of Spain, thats it. Surely this is wrong, when I drove across Europe there weren't any border controlls through France, Belgium, Holland and into Germany!

So does anyone know if she can travel to a European country with less than 6 months left?

Thanks in advance.

P.s. anyone know why a British passport is so worthless compared to a French or German one on which you can travel into some countries, like Malta, even if its 5 years expired?

[.Z.]

King Herald said:

It is a general rule that your passport must have six months left on it in just about every country I've been to. I'd guess that seeing as Malta is part of the EU then you wouldn't need a passport to get in really, depending on where you were arriving from.

I find it rather hard to believe that anybody got anywhere on a five year expired passport to tell the truth, unless the immigration guys were half asleep that day. Unless it was used purely as some sort of ID.

Thanks for the reply although the 5 year expired passport thing is true, straight from the Maltese Foreign Affairs website: www.mfa.gov.mt/showdoc.aspx?id=12&filesource=4&file=VISA%20REQUIREMENTS%20FOR%20FOREIGN%20NATIONALS%20010504.pdf

So you definately need a 6 months valid passport to travel to another E.U. country? Why different rules for us Brits when many European countries on the mainland have open borders?

Just seen your reply J111, Cheers for that, I'm gonna dig for further info

Edited by .Z. on Monday 24th July 13:49