Hi,

TL;DR: I am wondering if there is a government resource that talks about EU regulations on telework/remote work for a US company while on a Schengen visa.

I have plans to travel and work in the EU for ~50 days thru a Schengen Visa and I have a few questions. The wiki says ” Simply doing the same work you could do from your home country in Germany is against the terms of the Schengen visa.” under the section on remote work however this site says differently: [https://www.etiasvisa.com/etias-news/digital-nomad-visas-eu-countries](https://www.etiasvisa.com/etias-news/digital-nomad-visas-eu-countries). I have looked through Google and [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/homepage.html](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/homepage.html) but have been unable to find an official government site/regulation that contains this information, either due to not knowing what to search or difficulty parsing the legal text. Beyond that, all the results from Google have been lists of the top X countries for long-term/freelance/”digital nomad” visas.

Thanks in advance.

8 comments

  2. If you enter on a digital nomad/freelancer visa and play by all the rules, then of course it’s allowed

    If you just enter visa free as an American and do it anyway, that’s not technically allowed but for 50 days it’s not a huge deal and there realistically isn’t enforcement. Your company’s policies will be your biggest problem there, most likely

  3. Not legal advice or anything. If you want this settled for sure, talk to a lawyer.

    But within 50 days no one is going to care. I just wouldn’t advertise it, get paid into your regular us account etc.

  4. The page you linked doesn’t say differently. It says you need the right visa for that, which is depending on your work either a normal work visa or a freelancer visa. Both of which you will not get for remote work for a US company.

  5. > under the section on remote work however this site says differently

    No, it doesn’t. It talks about a specific kind of visa, the digital nomad visa. These are different from regular schengen visa. If you do not explicit have this type of visa, this site doesn’t apply to you.

    As far as I know, you still need a work visa or this new kind of visa to actually be allowed to do remote work.

  6. >I have plans to travel and work in the EU for ~50 days thru a Schengen Visa

    I am assuming you got a Schengen C visa?

    You cannot work. The website etiasvisa that you linked is very clear on that:

    >*The main difference between a tourist visa and a digital nomad visa is how long the holder can stay in the country.*
    >
    >*Tourist visas are for short stays, typically up to 3 months, whilst digital nomad visas allow for longer stays, often 1 year or more.*

    So the fact alone that you are staying for less than 90 days prevents you from obtaining the proper permits.

    To legally work inside the Schengen area, you need a Schengen type D visa and your work permit is limited to the country which issued the Schengen D visa.

    ​

    >DIGITAL NOMAD FREELANCE VISAS IN GERMANY

    The header is mis-leading. This is not a new visa, the “freelancer” has been around for decades. The prior difficulty of working on this as a “digital nomad” was the requirement to demonstrate that you had at least 3 German clients interested in your work.

    I am assuming that there will be changes in the law that make it easier to work for foreign clients. But the legal framework will stay the same – you need a residency permit as freelancer, you need to be self-employed, you need to register for taxes in Germany and your business needs to fall into the narrow category of “freiberuflich”.

  7. legally this isn’t permitted. Practically, if you’re staying 50 days, and you behave like a tourist during those 50 days with the exception that you spend some of them in front of your computer working…I wouldn’t expect any problems.

    you can ask in /r/digitalnomad. Surely someone there will have some knowledge about how this works.

  8. People do it every day. Whether it follows the technical letter of the law, one can argue. However no one is going to be able to ascertain whether you were working during your travels or not. I wouldn’t worry about it myself.

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