also called Schengen · Schengen zone
A group of mostly European countries that have abolished passport checks at their shared borders, functioning as one travel zone.
A group of mostly European countries that have scrapped passport checks between them, so they work as one travel zone. The trap is that hopping from one member country to another does not reset your allowed stay: time in all of them adds up together against one limit. It is not the same as the European Union, a political and economic union; plenty of countries are in one and not the other.
Someone spends time in one Schengen country, then moves to another assuming the clock starts fresh at the new border. It does not, because the days across every member country count as one pool, and they drift into an overstay believing each country gave them its own separate allowance.
Once inside, moving between member countries doesn't reset your allowed stay, so time in all of them counts together.
The difference is the whole point, so here is each one in a line.
The Schengen Area is a group of European countries with no passport checks between them, which is not the same body as the European Union, an economic and political union, though the two overlap.
The 90/180 rule is the cap letting a visa-free visitor stay up to ninety days in any rolling one-hundred-eighty, and a Schengen calculator counts those days for you.
Freedom of movement is the wider right EU citizens have to live and work in any member country, which ordinary visitors do not get.
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