EU and US edge toward visa fiasco

The European Commission will next week hold “political” talks on how to deal with a legal deadline for imposing visas on US and Canadian nationals.

The president, Jean-Claude Juncker i, put the item on the agenda because he had to under an EU law from 2001 on “visa reciprocity”.

The EU’s legal gazette, the Official Journal, back on 12 April 2014 published a notification that while US and Canadian nationals can go to any EU country without a permit, some EU citizens don’t have the same perks.

The journal noted that people from Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania need visas to go to the US. It also noted that people from Bulgaria and Romania need visas to enter Canada.

Under the EU law, Juncker had up to 24 months to table the discussion. The talks are to be held on the last possible day, next Tuesday (12 April).

“There’s a legal deadline for us to take stock of the situation … and it is for this reason that president Juncker has put this item on the agenda,” commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva told press in the EU capital on Friday (8 April).

The EU law also ties Juncker’s hands in other ways.

“If non-reciprocity cases still exist on 12 April 2016 … the commission will be obliged to adopt a delegated act on a temporary suspension of the visa waiver for 12 months for citizens of the third countries [the US and Canada] involved,” Andreeva said.

A “delegated act” is a law that makes minor changes to existing legislation.

Around 12 million Americans visited the EU last year.

The prospect that they’ll have to get visas in future is a remote one for now.

For one, the 2001 EU law doesn’t contain a deadline for when Juncker has to propose the “delegated act” on US and Canadian visas.

When he does it, the big EU states in the EU Council, such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK, which control large chunks of votes, have to back it.

More than half the 736 MEPs in the European Parliament also have to back it.

They have up to six months to make up their mind after Juncker goes ahead. The delegated act itself can also stipulate a date of entry into force that is up to 90 days after it is adopted.

Andreeva also underlined that the commission’s 12 April deliberation will be “political” in nature. She said the US is a “strategic partner of the EU” and that both sides are “working constructively” on a solution.

Her wording, sources said, signals that commission lawyers will do their best to wriggle out of a situation that risks causing annoyance to two of the EU’s best friends on the world stage.

But at the same time, there’s no indication the the US is preparing to budge on Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania.

“I haven’t heard anything to suggest it [a change of policy],” a diplomat from one of the five EU states told EUobserver on Friday.

Meanwhile, the EU pressure for an American U-turn comes at a difficult time.

In the wake of the Paris terrorist attack last November, the US tightened security requirements even for the 23 EU countries that do enjoy the visa-waiver.

They did it amid fears that “foreign fighters” - EU passport holders who trained with the jihadist group Islamic State in Syria or Iraq - could use the waiver programme to infiltrate the US.

Islamic State attackers with EU passports killed 35 more people in Brussels, the EU capital, on 22 March, catapulting security to the top of the US election agenda.

An EU source said that while Juncker has no legal deadline to propose the “delegated act” on US and Canadian visas, in practical terms, he “can’t wait too long” after 12 April to take the step.