Can I travel to Greece with a criminal record?
- By
- Aparna Patel
- |
- 28 Jul, 2023
- |
AFAIK, countries don’t maintain criminal records internationally with the exception for high prolific individuals who are on Interpol’s watchlist.
Criminal records are generally shared in intranational regions (i.e. US/Canada/Mexico, Australia/NZ, EU member states).
In Europe, Rehabilitation (penology) – Wikipedia is the primary goal of the penal policy.
In general, once the sentence has been served, you are again considered a member of society (i.e. you are not considered a criminal until the Kingdom comes).
The general criteria is whether the foreigner ‘endangers public safety’ or not.
Short term stays will be treated differently than long term stays (residence).
In German law §54 Interest in expulsion – AufthG, will give you an idea what is understood under the general term ‘endangers public safety’. Assume this will differ slightly depending on the jurasdiction.
For short term stays, in your case a visa free entry, a border guard may see what is on record and make a determination if you are presently considered a person that ‘endangers public safety’.
Just because this may have been the case in the past, does not necessarily mean that it is presently.
The overall circumstances will be the base on any final decision.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘