What ETIAS will ask about your criminal history

Many 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 offences set out in the Annex to the ETIAS regulation. Common convictions that cause worry, including drink-driving, minor drug possession, petty theft and common assault, are not on that list. The Annex names 29 categories of offence, and unless you have a conviction in one of those categories within the lookback period, your answer is simply no.

What the application will ask

Article 17(4) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1240 sets out the background questions the ETIAS application must include, and a 2023 Commission decision fixes their exact wording. The criminal history question reads: “Have you been convicted in the last 15 years of one or more of the criminal offences listed below?” A second question covers terrorist offences over the last 25 years. The regulation as first adopted in 2018 said 10 and 20 years; a 2021 amendment raised both, so older guides quoting 10 years are out of date. The questions cover convictions only, not arrests or charges that did not result in a conviction.

The decision also fixes how the form works. You see the Annex list and answer yes or no for each offence, or “no” to all of them at once. A yes brings the instruction “Please indicate the country of conviction as well as the date of each conviction and provide answers to the additional questions.” The form tells you that the conviction date means “the date of the official judgment issued by a court”, and it will not accept a date more than 15 years before you apply (25 for terrorist offences). Two follow-ups come next: “Is the conviction final?”, where final means it cannot be appealed further at national level, and “Have you completed that sentence?”

The form will also ask whether you have stayed in a specific war or conflict zone in the past 10 years, and whether you have been the subject of a decision requiring you to leave a member state or one of the visa-free countries listed in EU law, or of a return decision, in the past 10 years. A yes to any of them leads to further questions with a fixed list of answers to choose from.

The 29 categories in scope

The Annex lists 29 categories. They include:

• Terrorist offences (with the longer 25-year lookback)
• Participation in a criminal organisation
• Trafficking in human beings
• Sexual exploitation of children and child pornography
• Illicit trafficking in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances
• Illicit trafficking in weapons, munitions and explosives
• Murder and grievous bodily injury
• Rape
• Arson
• Organised and armed robbery
• Corruption
• Laundering the proceeds of crime and counterfeiting currency
• Fraud, including fraud against the EU’s financial interests
• Computer-related crime and cybercrime
• Crimes within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court

Most of the list sits at the serious end of the scale, but not all of it. The Annex also covers environmental crime, facilitating unauthorised entry and residence, forgery of administrative documents, counterfeiting and piracy of products, trafficking in stolen vehicles, industrial espionage, and racism and xenophobia. It is worth reading in full rather than assuming.

What is not in scope

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. Ordinary theft, shoplifting and criminal damage do not appear. Fraud does, and it is not limited to organised crime, so a fraud conviction within the last 15 years needs a yes.

If you are unsure whether a specific conviction falls within one of the 29 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.

Do traffic offences count on ETIAS?

Not as such. None of the 29 categories in the Annex is a road traffic offence, so speeding, careless driving and drink-driving convictions are not on the list. There is one ETIAS application for all 30 countries, so the answer is the same whether you are heading to France or anywhere else.

The grey area is a driving case that ended in a conviction for something the Annex does list, such as “murder, grievous bodily injury” (category 13). The EU texts do not explain how national offences, such as causing death or serious injury by dangerous driving, map onto those categories. If that is your situation, the law does not answer it for you. Ask the national authorities of the country you plan to visit first (its embassy or consulate) and a lawyer in the country where you were convicted before you apply.

Do spent or expunged convictions count on ETIAS?

The legal texts do not say. Neither the ETIAS Regulation, the 2023 decision on the form’s wording nor the official ETIAS FAQ mentions spent, expunged, sealed or pardoned convictions, or national rehabilitation laws, and none makes an exception for them. The question is simply whether you have “been convicted in the last 15 years” of a listed offence.

Two things are settled. The 15 years run from the date of the court judgment, so a conviction more than 15 years before you apply (25 for terrorist offences) is outside the question whatever its status now. And finishing your sentence does not take a conviction out of scope: the form asks “Have you completed that sentence?” as a follow-up to a yes. Whether a conviction your own country has wiped from the record still counts as a conviction is the part the texts leave open. Put that question to the national authorities of the country you plan to visit first, ideally with advice from a lawyer where you were convicted.

Does an old US entry refusal count on ETIAS?

Not if it was more than 10 years ago. The form has no general question about being refused entry. The nearest are two questions fixed by the 2023 decision: “Over the past 10 years, have you been subject to one or more return decisions issued by an EU Member State or any third country?” and “Over the past 10 years, have you been subject to one or more decisions requiring you to leave the territory of an EU Member State or of a third country listed below?” The date field will not accept anything more than 10 years before you apply, so a refusal from 30 years ago falls outside both.

For a more recent one, the country list for the second question is the EU member states plus the countries on the EU’s visa-free list, which includes the United States. The decision defines a “decision requiring to leave the territory” as “any administrative or judicial decision or act, different from a return decision, requiring the applicant to leave the territory” of a member state or any third country. It does not say whether being turned away at a US airport counts. That is a question for the national authorities of the country you plan to visit first, not one to guess at on the form.

What happens if you answer yes

A yes answer does not mean your application is refused automatically. Under the regulation, it sends the application for manual processing by the ETIAS National Unit of the member state responsible, which for a yes answer with no other hit is normally the country of your first intended stay. That unit assesses the security or illegal immigration risk and decides whether to issue or refuse the authorisation. The regulation sets a 96-hour deadline for decisions, which is extended if you are asked for more information or invited to an interview.

The assessment is case by case rather than a fixed rule, so a yes does not settle the outcome either way. If refused, the applicant is told the grounds and has a right of appeal, which is heard in the member state that took the decision under its national law. The ETIAS refusal guide explains what that process involves.

Getting the answer right

The regulation says an authorisation must be refused where there are reasonable and serious doubts about the reliability of the applicant’s statements, so accuracy matters in both directions. Answering yes when your conviction is not in the 29 categories is not harmless; it triggers manual review and can delay a decision. Answering no when you have a conviction in scope is a more serious problem. Under a 2021 amendment, ETIAS checks applications against ECRIS-TCN, the EU system showing which member states hold conviction records on non-EU nationals, for terrorist offences in the previous 25 years and, over the previous 15 years, other Annex offences punishable by at least three years in custody. A match there would contradict a no answer.

The approach is straightforward. Read the question and the Annex. If your conviction is not in the 29 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 press reporting now pointing to 2027 rather than late 2026, and no official date announced, 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 29 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.