What ETIAS will ask about your criminal history

Most travellers with a past criminal conviction will not need to disclose it on an ETIAS application. The form will include a criminal history question, but it only covers a defined list of serious offences set out in the ETIAS regulation. Common convictions that cause worry, including drink-driving without causing death or serious injury, minor drug possession, petty theft and common assault, are not in scope. The regulation names 32 specific categories of offence, and unless you have a conviction in one of those categories, your answer is simply no.

What the application will ask

Article 17 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1240 sets out the background questions the ETIAS application must include. One of them covers criminal history. The question asks, in effect: have you been convicted of any offence from the list in the Annex in the past 10 years? For terrorism-related offences, the lookback period extends to 20 years. The question covers convictions only, not arrests or charges that did not result in a guilty verdict.

The form will also ask whether you have spent time in conflict zones and whether you have had an entry ban or removal order from any country. All three questions apply to every applicant regardless of nationality.

The 32 categories in scope

The Annex to the ETIAS regulation draws on the same list of serious crime categories the EU uses across its mutual recognition instruments. The main ones include:

• Terrorism (with the extended 20-year lookback)
• Participation in a criminal organisation
• Trafficking in human beings
• Sexual exploitation of children and child pornography
• Illicit drug trafficking
• Illicit trafficking in weapons, munitions and explosives
• Murder and grievous bodily injury
• Rape
• Arson
• Robbery and extortion
• Corruption and money laundering
• Fraud, including fraud against EU financial interests
• Cybercrime
• War crimes and crimes against humanity

The full Annex covers 32 categories in total. All of them sit at the serious end of the scale. The connecting thread is gravity: these are offences the EU treats as warranting cross-border law enforcement cooperation. They are not minor or technical breaches.

What is not in scope

Almost all road traffic offences fall outside the Annex. Drink-driving is not listed unless the conviction involved causing death or serious bodily harm to another person. Possession of small quantities of drugs for personal use is absent, though drug trafficking is very much included. Common assault below the level of grievous bodily injury is not covered. Theft, shoplifting, criminal damage and most financial offences committed by individuals rather than organised crime do not appear.

If you are unsure whether a specific conviction falls within one of the 32 categories, the safest course is legal advice from a solicitor familiar with immigration law in your jurisdiction. The consequences of answering incorrectly in either direction are real enough to be worth checking.

What happens if you answer yes

A yes answer does not mean your application is refused automatically. It means the application goes to the ETIAS National Unit of the member state you declare as your first country of entry. That unit carries out a manual review. Most cases are resolved within four days. Applications referred on security grounds may take longer.

The review is risk-based rather than binary. An old conviction for an offence at the lower end of the Annex may well result in approval after manual review. A recent conviction for a serious category is more likely to result in refusal. If refused, the applicant receives written notice explaining the grounds and has a right of appeal, which goes to the competent national authority of the member state concerned. The ETIAS refusal guide explains what that process involves.

Getting the answer right

Providing false information on an ETIAS application is itself a ground for refusal, and a material one. That applies in both directions. Answering yes when your conviction is not in the 32 categories is not harmless; it generates unnecessary manual review and can delay approval. Answering no when you have a conviction in scope is a more serious problem. The automated background checks ETIAS runs against the EU’s ECRIS-TCN database (which holds criminal records for non-EU nationals across member states) may surface a match. A false negative answer compounds the original issue.

The approach is straightforward. Read the question and the Annex. If your conviction is not in the 32 categories, answer no. If it is, answer yes, provide the required details, and let the review process run. Do not omit a relevant conviction because you think it might be overlooked.

What to do before applications open

No ETIAS application can be submitted yet. With the launch now expected in 2027 rather than late 2026, there is time to prepare properly. For most people, that means reading the list of in-scope offences, satisfying yourself that your record does not include anything in those 32 categories, and confirming you hold a valid passport for when the portal opens. For anyone with a more complex history, it means speaking to a lawyer before applying, not after.

The ETIAS and criminal records guide covers the background question in fuller detail, including the manual review process and how an appeal works. For the current official launch timeline, the ETIAS status page tracks confirmed developments. No action is required yet. Applications are not open.