Commission to negotiate visa deal with US

The EU executive has received the green light from the bloc’s 27 interior ministers to negotiate a transatlantic agreement enabling visa-free travel for European citizens to the United States.

The decision, taken at a Council meeting on 18 April, authorises the Commission to open talks with the US government regarding conditions required for all EU countries to be included in the US Visa Waiver Programme, which is currently open to just 15 EU countries. 

However, the Commission will only be allowed to negotiate areas that are under its exclusive competence. Indeed, Washington has consistently refused to grant visa-free access to its territory to the EU as a whole, arguing that this would not allow it to properly ensure that all countries meet its stringent security requirements. 

US pressure to conduct bilateral negotiations with individual EU nations has angered the Commission. It sees the move as an attempt to lure countries like the Czech Republic, Hungary or Estonia – which are currently excluded from the US Visa Waiver Programme – to hand over extra security data concerning their citizens, in exchange for the same visa-free access that Western EU citizens already benefit from. 

In the end, a compromise was found last month in the form of a “twin-track approach”, whereby the US will first have to work out the outlines of an EU-wide visa waiver scheme with the Commission before finalising deals with national capitals. 

A key area that ministers have asked the Commission to address is whether US security demands could contravene Community law on data protection (EURACTIV 13/03/08) by requiring countries that have concluded bilateral visa deals with the US to surrender more information on their citizens than allowed under EU rules. 

So far the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia and Malta have signed such deals, despite the Commission’s warnings that it still has “concerns with certain aspects of these bilateral agreements and reserves the right to take action in accordance with the Treaty” if member states cross the line. 

Only “certain types of information” that are “useful in the fight against terrorism and serious organised crime” and that fall under EU data protection law should be shared, stressed the Commission’s Director General for Justice and Home Affairs Jonathan Faull. He added that granting US authorities general access to the EU-wide police database, known as the Schengen Information System (or SIS, see EURACTIV 09/11/07), would certainly be excluded. 

“We are open to some demands, but we want reciprocity,” agreed French Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie. 

The newly-agreed mandate also asks the Commission to look into US plans to set up an “Electronic System for Travel Authorisation” (ESTA) by June 2008. Such a scheme would enable visa-free travel for all citizens, provided that they answer a detailed online questionnaire before boarding their plane to the United States. But many Europeans see this as a “visa in disguise”. 

An EU delegation is due to travel to Washington towards the end of the month to open the dialogue. 

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