Blank Page Requirement in Passport
 

I am traveling to Italy and just realized that I don't have two completely blank pages in my passport. I have one completely blank page and the adjacent page has only 1 stamp and then there is another page that only has two stamps. In total there are enough spots to make up two pages, I just don't know how picky they are and the stamps never seem to be exactly in the squares. Does anyone know if this will be a problem when entering Italy?

Not in my experience. The Schengen passport control agents have been efficient about page usages so as not to use up pages in vain. Sometimes they squeeze in 5 stamps on a page. Schengen passport control are not like some SE Asian countries which require seemingly excessive number of blank pages.

I wish the US immigration agents would do the same. On several trips, they put stamps on the spine of the passport! That killed two adjacent blank pages in one shot!

I've never actually had a problem with this, and even have had some customs agents not stamp at times or place some stamps over stamps. I don't think it will be an issue, unless someone wants to give you a hard time for some reason!

I only have Arabic stamps in my passports, do Europeans still stamp?? If so, what for, since they will be referencing databases rather than putting ink on paper?

I haven't been to Europe in 2 years or so, but they were still stamping then, at least the first country that you visited.

Yes, they still stamp. No it will not be an issue.

The last time we were in Italy they stamped the page but the stamper had no ink, so the page remained blank.

If your passport doesn't expire for a few more years and you have more trips planned in that time frame, you can have blank pages added to your passport. But I wouldn't bother until you return from your upcoming trip.

Yes, Jean, for $82 you can get pages added - as long as you hurry and add them by the end of 2015, because the State Department is discontinuing this service:

http://www.jaunted.com/story/2015/3/...are+Going+Away

or just renew it for $110. I'm tempted to renew my six-month-old passport now because, on my recent trip to Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro, I crossed borders numerous times and I think I burned five or six pages already! I hate the picture anyway.

Do they still offer passports with extra pages?

Hey Rosie7235!

Did you have any problems?? I am in the same dilemma and am very worried that I am going to get turned away!!

Weird first post, parentsi, topping a four year old post.

This is the only website that had a question specific to traveling to Italy.... So I am curious if she had any problems.

Parents, I wouldn't give it a second thought. But, then we are pretty relaxed about travel. Never seen anyone have a problem. We go to Italy every fall, sometimes coming into Europe first from someplace else. We have few stamps that we can find. We also think they often have no ink, sometimes stamp over other stamps and basically see a US Passport (in our case) and just go through the motions. Once we flew into Venice, and the Passport guy seemed annoyed that we didn't just bypass his desk. The only odd thing was that we went through Paris last fall with our daughter (and then on tp Switzerland). We thought they stamped, but there was no sign of it on any of our passports. When our daughter returned to the Paris airport from Munich, they suggested they might not allow her entry into Paris because they could not observe any entry place on her Passport. She told them that was their problem and she would be happy to provide them flight emails, and they simply shrugged and motioned her through.

@ parentsi2019: If you are about to go to Italy and do NOT have the requisite number of blank pages, you might want to contact both (a) your state department and (b) the Italian embassy in the country where you live. No matter how well intentioned, t's one thing for someone to offer anecdotes and tell you not to worry; it's quite another to face the consequences if there are any.

Of course, I didn’t tell YOU not to worry. I said I wouldn’t worry. I think you know the answer the authorities will give you. If you have time, get a new passport. I personally have found that Italian passport officials seem to give US passport a quick approval. In all our years of travel, I have never seen one look for extra blank pages, and I have never seen an airline take notice of not enough blank pages. Once an airline almost didn’t board us because of an upcoming Passport expiration date, but we showed them online that the country we were going to was more lenient than they thought, and that was that. If you are wearing a MAGA hat, and the officer doesn’t like Trump, who knows. Things can be subjective.

Seems that we have had different travel experiences. Fortunately, I've always made sure to have the requisite number of blank pages, so I don't know what would have happened if I didn't.

I've had Border Control/Immigration look for blank pages more times than not . . .

Been traveling for almost 40 years now. Never knew you had to have a requisite number of blank pages in your passport. When did that happen?

It has been a requirement in many, if not most, countries all over the world. And, it has been for many, many years. Italy requires two blank pages, supposedly to allow for incoming and possibly outgoing stamps. That is one of the reasons US used to sell extra blank pages, but now require new Passports to get them, as I understand. But, is it enforced? It might be there, but I have not found online one instance where anyone, at least with a US Passport, ever claimed to be turned away in any European country including Italy, the destination of the person asking the question. Although when this thread started three years ago, no one indicated that this was ever a problem then, two posters above now claim they are regularly examined for blank pages. Hard to believe based on my own regular travels to Europe. Have you ever seen an airline or border agent look for your blank pages?

Italy never stamps my passport, neither on entry nor on exit. Maybe because it's an Italian passport? However, someone told me that it's because everything's electronic now, they just need to scan the passport. (In my case, they just look at it, and wave me on.) I just checked my Italian passport, and it has 40 blank pages, and not a single stamp. I've traveled to the US at least once a year, and often several times in the five years since I renewed my passport. (I use my US passport when entering and leaving the US, but otherwise use the Italian passport.)

I'm fairly certain that Italy also neglects to stamp non-EU passports, because I've seen complaints on TripAdvisor about the following situation: someone enters the EU in Italy, and their passport doesn't get stamped. A few weeks later, the person exits the EU at Schiphol airport in the Netherlands and gets a lot of grief because there's no entry stamp, meaning that it's not possible to determine if the person overstayed their allowed tourist visit time. All of the complaints I've seen have specifically involved exit from Schiphol airport, but it may be a problem at other airports.

In this day and age, it's hard to believe that the Dutch are that backward (or the Schengen countires) that they have no computer system set up to register people when they enter and leave countries. In fact, that contradicts what I've read about SIS, the information system they share which is maintained by France and updated every five minutes.
eg
https://www.rte.ie/news/europe/2017/...ecks-airports/

I think all of this is a non-issue, as I suggested initially, but, perhaps, more importantly, as others have suggested, because most places simply do not stamp passports anymore. Except if you ask for it as a souvenir. In Paris last year, I swear that the guy stamped it with a loud noise but there is nothing there. We have looked at our passports and, despite numerous trips to Europe in recent years, our only stamps have been in the Caribbean and Cuba. None from Europe. As bvlenci says, it is all electronic.

From: https://www.us-passport-service-guid...for-visas.html

>>A standard, 28-page U.S. passport book has 17 blank pages for visa stamps. The non-standard, 52-page book has 43 blank pages for visas. Most foreign countries require a specific number of blank visa pages in a passport as an entry requirement. Some airlines will not allow you to board if this requirement is not met.<<

My passport almost always gets stamped in Europe if I am entering or exiting the Schengen area. The only time it never gets stamped is when leaving the UK (it only gets stamped on the way in) and once last year, arriving in Rome the agent didn't stamp it and I had to ask him to. I would be nervous without a stamp, call me old fashioned but the last thing I want to do is get hassled by some dude for a missing one.

It's possible that the problem leaving the EU without an entry stamp is no longer an issue. I know I've read about it more than once in the Tripadvisor travel forums, but usually people reporting these things rarely say when it happened, I just did a search and found one such complaint from six years ago, but maybe the incident happened even earlier.

We fly twice a year from Boston to Nice entering Europe through Germany and exiting through Zurich. I can't remember the last time they have not stamped our passports both entering and exiting. Upon exiting, the officers have sometimes taken exaggerated deep breaths when they have trouble finding the entrance stamp. I'd say the computerization has a ways to go.