Countries in the Schengen Area no longer have their own individual visa policy - they are bound to the single visa policy of the Schengen Area. There is no longer such thing as a French visa, German visa, Spanish visa, etc. - it's a Schengen Visa. By law, France cannot decide on its own to deviate from this; it is bound to the Schengen rules governing which nationalities are visa-free and which require a visa.

So we would either require a visa for the entire Schengen Area, or not. With the current rules, we could not be e.g. visa-free for Spain but visa required for France.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned on another thread, or just earlier on this one. It is true that there are no visas for individual Schengen countries, only Schengen Zone visas. However, each country appears to apply its own standards to applications, so there could be a benefit to choosing where to apply. Of course, once the visa is granted, it shouldn't be a problem to renew it. If the application is rejected, then it won't be granted by a different country, so it's worth doing a bit of window-shopping first.

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

That's very interesting. Though I guess it would raise eyebrows if you needed a Schengen Visa for a trip to France but you applied to some random eastern European EU country to get the visa.

I think it was mentioned by a non-EU citizen. In any case, it's more a question of forward planning. "I need a Schengen visa, so I'll book a cheap flight to Country X and apply for a Schengen visa to get there. Once I have the visa, it's valid for all Schengen countries."

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

Ok yes. That makes sense.
Currently the Schengen visa application doesn’t require criminal record disclosure so even if we had to apply for one, we wouldn’t have to disclose?

If they don't ask, you don't have to tell them, but UK citizens don't need a Schengen visa yet. The rules may change when we leave the EU.

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

Plans are in place to add a criminal records question to the Schengen visa application so it is in line with the ETIAS application.

Macron confirmed that this is fake news and he had used the wrong words in his 2nd language!

Of course, ETIAS may still be a concern in the future - lots of comments about that in other threads on the forum

Of course, once we leave the EU, we won't have any input into their rules and procedures, so they won't have to take our prejudices and outdated attitudes into account. Being a rule-taker isn't always a bad thing....

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

There has already been a post on this thread with the EU’s planned questions relating to criminal records for the ETIAS.

Unless this has changed, then the questions required from the ETIAS only relate to convictions in the past 10 years, or terrorism convictions in the past 20 years.
(This detail is on page 62 of many if I remember correctly?)

So if you have a conviction over 10 years old, or a caution then you won’t have to disclose anyway.

This may put some people’s minds at rest?