Residence Permits, D visa, or any other visa, delivered by Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus, and Ireland: these documents in principle don’t have any (visa-free) value for the Schengen area.
However in the following two cases an exception to the visa requirement can be possible:
- they explicitly state that they have been issued to a family member of an EU citizen, or
- they explicitly state that they have been issued due to the Directive 2004/38,
This only concerns residence permits, never visa. In order to verify whether a specific residence permit delivered by Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus or Ireland is visa exempted for travelling to the Schengen area, you have to click on the subpage of that specific state below. A new page will open. Only when the document is explicitly mentioned it is possible to have a visa-free travel to the Schengen area.
If the document is not mentioned explicitly on the site then the document does not have a visa-free travel to the Schengen area.
The subpages can also mention explicitly that a certain document does not have visa free value, this due to repeated question on this matter:
- Romania: “Permis de Sedere” with mention “Membru Familie Cet Roman” does not have visa free value
- Bulgaria : “Bulgarian residence permit with remark “Family member of Bulgarian citizen” does not have visa free value