User talk:Thearones

September 2022

Hi, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. It appears that you tried to give Visa requirements for Polish citizens a different title by copying its content and pasting either the same content, or an edited version of it, into another page with a different name. This is known as a "cut-and-paste move", and it is undesirable because it splits the page history, which is legally required for attribution. Instead, the software used by Wikipedia has a feature that allows pages to be moved to a new title together with their edit history.

In most cases for registered users, once your account is four days old and has ten edits, you should be able to move an article yourself using the "Move" tab at the top of the page (the tab may be hidden in a dropdown menu for you). This both preserves the page history intact and automatically creates a redirect from the old title to the new. If you cannot perform a particular page move yourself this way (e.g. because a page already exists at the target title), please follow the instructions at requested moves to have it moved by someone else. Also, if there are any other pages that you moved by copying and pasting, even if it was a long time ago, please list them at Wikipedia:Requests for history merge. Thank you. Dl2000 (talk) 13:55, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi, yes indeed I wasn't aware of that function. I will use it from now. Thank you. Thearones (talk) 13:59, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Citations needed

Hey,

you added about 100 times the "citations needed" inlay in the article Visa requirements for German citizens.

You also added this inlay in the column "Visa requirement" of the table List of territories, disputed areas or restricted zones. Did you check beforehand, if the references given in the Notes column are sufficient?

For example Dafur: In the Notes there is already a reference given, that a travel permit is needed. But you stated that a citation is needed for that in the row further left. WikiPate (talk) 15:08, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for June 2

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Andorra and the Schengen Area

Andorra has no open borders with its neighbors, France and Spain. So there are no Andorran open borders with the Schengen area. Pmmollet^Talk 06:16, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

In 2024, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports that Andorra has a de facto open border with Spain and France. Thearones (talk) 06:26, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Comment regarding edit comment

Regarding your comment in your edit on 25 June 2024 on the article on Schengen Area: As was clearly stated on the talk page of that article, the information by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs was (and still is) contradicted by the fact that there are official border crossing points between Andorra and the Schengen states France and Spain (in contrast to Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican, where no such border crossing points exist). Even if the website of the German Minister of Foreign Affairs in general is a reliable source, there is no guarantee that it does not contain any errors.

And regarding your comment on de facto law, you may note that the Schengen borders code, as far as I can see, contains no possible exception for the border controls at the external borders to Andorra. A basic principle of Union law is the principle of rule of law, which normally means that there has to be a legal basis for an exception from legal provisions. Nablicus (talk) 12:47, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Ministries of Foreign Affairs also do mistakes. Errare humanum est. I have not found other recent reliable sources on that topic. So, I ultimately don't know whether the border between Andorra and the Schengen Area is open or controlled. But I think it is more accurate to believe that the border is open if the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs says it is and no other recent reliable source claims the opposite.

I see your point. However, I think that customary international law exists and that it is law, even if it differs from statutory law in many aspects. Customary law doesn't necessarily mean less rule of law, it just means that the law in question is not written. Thearones (talk) 13:08, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

I completely agree, but the thing is that there are actually recent/updated references (both on the website of the European Commission and in the Official Journal of the European Union) regarding the existence of official border crossing points at the external border between the Schengen area and Andorra. I therefore contacted the Commission to find out the "truth" behind the situation, and they replied that based on customary law, Spain and France have not had border controls to Andorra for a long time. So it seems like it's not a recent change of border regime. At the same time, there are, as said, official border crossing points, and third country nationals subject to visa requirements do in principle need a multiple-entry Schengen visa when traveling to Andorra. So while the border controls indeed are relaxed, the situation is still very different from the open-border regime for Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican.

In any case, I just felt that your edit comment was unnecessarily "hostile" towards me, but now I feel that we have cleared the air so to speak. Thanks! --Nablicus (talk) 13:27, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

@Nablicus, thank you for asking the European Commission!

But please let us be careful and precise on what we are talking about.

• The "Schengen Area" usually refers to the open-border area. However there is also a unified visa policy of the Schengen Area. Those are two different things, a state might participate in one but not the other. For example, Cyprus has adopted the unified visa policy of the Schengen Area even if it is not in the open-border area. Andorra de facto participates in the open-border area but not in the unified visa policy of the Schengen Area. Another example of that is the Common Travel Area between the UK and Ireland. The border between the UK and Ireland is open even if the two countries have different visa policies. For example citizens of Ukraine do not require a visa for Ireland but do require a visa for the UK. What this essentially means is that Ukrainian citizens can travel to Ireland without a visa and then enter (illegally) the UK by simply crossing the border between the two countries, there will be no passport checks or customs. Another example of an open-border area with several different visa policies is the Central America-4 Border Control Agreement.
• Yes, of course that the situation in Andorra is different from the open-border regime for Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican. In fact every situation is different, even between Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican. The "official" (but de facto not enforced) visa policies of those countries are different. For exemple citizens of Russia officially do not require a visa for San Marino because of an agreement between the two countries but de facto (as there is no airport in San Marino, which means that Russian citizens cannot enter San Marino directly) need a multiple-entry Schengen visa when traveling to San Marino. On the other hand, Monaco has officially adopted the visa policy of France. And the Vatican signs its own visa exemption agreements, which, de facto, do only have effect for Vatican citizens traveling to the countries it has an agreement with but not the other way around.

I apologize if my edit comment sounded hostile to you, it wasn't my intention. (·•᷄∩•᷅ )

Have a good day, Thearones (talk) 15:47, 12 July 2024 (UTC)