Brussels, 14/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - The European Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs, Dimitris Avramopoulos, travelled to Washington on 13 November. His first visit abroad was to attend the EU/US ministerial meeting on justice and home affairs questions.
The Greek politician put forward a position on the subject of foreign combatants and in this connection, called on the US not to restrict the “Visa waiver” programme, which allows Europeans, with the exception of a number of countries such as Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, to enter the US without a visa. Although the two main themes of the ministerial meeting on the “home affairs” chapter were foreign combatants in Syria and Iraq and organised crime, the European Commissioner explained that with regard to foreign combatants, the EU is closely following the “discussion with the US, particularly those who are calling for a more restrictive approach to the ' visa waiver' programme”. He asserted that “I perfectly understand these concerns. However, I hope that all the actors concerned will come up with an appropriate response to this issue, which will not prevent journeys being made by genuine travellers”.
Avramopoulos also hopes that the concerns relating to jihadists will not hamper discussions on visa reciprocity, which should lead, according to the EU, to the lifting of these obligations for all European nationals affected in Bulgaria, Poland and Romania.
The Commissioner also tackled the “justice” dossiers, in the absence of his counterpart, Vera Jourova. He brought up the dossiers relating to personal data protection, particularly the transatlantic framework agreement on data protection. Discussions on this framework agreement have been continuing since March 2011 and it looks like it is going to be put into practice but the EU is still waiting for the US to adopt legislation that will allow Europeans to request compensation at US courts in cases where their personal data has been used inappropriately. The US has made a commitment to doing this and specific discussions took place on 14 November.
Avramopoulos' visit also provided an opportunity to discuss the “Safe Harbour” agreement, whose weak points were revealed in the “Snowden” and NSA phone tapping scandal. The European Commission does not yet want to get rid of this instrument but did make a request to Washington in the middle of last year to implement 13 recommendations by summer 2014 on this question. Most of these demands had been agreed by the US but the two sides are still stalling on one significant issue: restricting access to data covered by the “Safe Harbour” agreement for national security reasons. This demand is of particular importance to the Europeans and the Commissioner is hoping for a speedy resumption of work in an effort to find a solution.
The US and EU are expected to meet up again at the beginning of next year. (SP)