Federal Act
on Foreign Nationals and Integration
(Foreign Nationals and Integration Act, FNIA)¹

¹ Any air car­ri­er that vi­ol­ates its duty of care un­der Art­icle 92 para­graph 1 shall be re­quired to pay 4000 francs for each per­son car­ried who is not in pos­ses­sion of the re­quired travel doc­u­ments, visa or res­id­ence doc­u­ments. In ser­i­ous cases, the pen­alty is 16 000 francs per per­son. In minor cases, pro­ceed­ings may be waived.

² A vi­ol­a­tion of the duty of care is pre­sumed if the air car­ri­er car­ries per­sons who are not in pos­ses­sion of the travel doc­u­ments, visas, or res­id­ence doc­u­ments re­quired for entry to the Schen­gen area or for trans­it through the in­ter­na­tion­al trans­it zones of the air­ports and who are re­fused entry.

³ There is no vi­ol­a­tion of the duty of care where:

a.

the air car­ri­er proves that:

1.

the for­gery or falsi­fic­a­tion of a travel doc­u­ment, visa or res­id­ence doc­u­ment was not clearly re­cog­nis­able,

2.

it was not clearly re­cog­nis­able that a travel doc­u­ment, visa or res­id­ence doc­u­ment did not per­tain to the per­son car­ried,

3.

it was not im­me­di­ately pos­sible to as­cer­tain the au­thor­ised term of stay or points of entry on the basis of the stamps on the travel doc­u­ment,

4.

it took all the or­gan­isa­tion­al meas­ures that can reas­on­ably be re­quired to pre­vent it from car­ry­ing per­sons that do not pos­sess the travel doc­u­ments, visas and res­id­ence doc­u­ments re­quired for entry to the Schen­gen area or for trans­it through the in­ter­na­tion­al trans­it zones of the air­ports;

b.

the air car­ri­er provides cred­ible evid­ence that it was co­erced in­to car­ry­ing a per­son.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may provide for ex­emp­tions from the pen­alty un­der para­graph 1, in par­tic­u­lar in situ­ations of war or nat­ur­al dis­aster.