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)

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'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)

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 read today that the French are planning to impose a visa requirement for UK travellers to France in the event of a no-deal.
This seems strange and potentially worrying that individual countries are planning to impose travel restrictions, rather than relying on an EU wide system that doesn’t currently ask for criminal history for visa applications, and is also only planning to ask restricted questions relating to criminal history on the planned ETIAS system.

My point was that it wouldn't work travelling in the opposite direction. It still undermines the government's supposed determination to keep foreign criminals out, and probably explains why they aren't being very strict. It's almost like an honesty box.

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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)

In terms of the law, it is all political will. In terms of how politics effects the law - you just need to look at the US. If a politician stood for election here promising that every sexual offender must place an orange sign in their garden notifying the public of their 'danger' and map the location of every offender online the public would vote for it - the fact it actually increases the likelihood of reoffending is material. One of the very reasons we are leaving the EU is because they are not as strict on crime/ punishment as us. So, we are never going to align with the EU requirements - we will always just get stricter and stricter.

Just look at Sex Stories in newspapers - people love to get angry about them. It sells newspapers.

My point didn't relate to Schengen.  As Ireland is in the EU, a citizen from another country is free to travel there regardless of border checks. Once in Ireland, the CTA would allow easy entry into the UK...

The Republic of Ireland isn't in the Schengen Zone, so any checks would be done on leaving the Schengen country. Of course, going in the opposite direction, you could travel from Northern Ireland to the Republic, but not from there to a Schengen country.

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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)

Even if the UK implement a pre-authorisation travel system, there will still be an easy way for an EU citizen to bypass if they want to.

They will have the right to travel to Ireland. They can then simply travel from Dublin to any UK port, or go via Belfast - with the Common Travel Area there are no border checks between Ireland and the UK.