Brussels, 27/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - The tourism working group of the European Parliament transport committee (TRAN) held a brief debate on Thursday 26 March on the forthcoming visa policy. It is preparing to draft an opinion on this proposal for a regulation, currently under study by the civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee (LIBE).
The proposal seeks particularly to create a new type of visa, known as a “roaming visa” or a “type T visa”, that will allow non-Europeans to travel around the Schengen area for over 90 days but less than a year. The European Commission has revealed that the Council of the EU is working on a compromise, since “some member states have concerns over security”.
“It is important for us to have an opinion on this issue because the competitiveness of tourism is closely linked to visa policy”, said Istvan Ujhelyi (S&D, Hungary), the deputy chair of the working group. He says that, every year, six million non-Europeans decide not to visit Europe because visas are so difficult to obtain. He has, therefore, called for a visa policy that is flexible and works in the interests of tourism. Referring to the MEPs on the civil liberties committee, he was critical of their fixation with security issues: “The terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels were not committed by third country nationals who came in on a tourist visa”, he railed.
He was backed by most of the members of the working group, who argued that cross-cutting consideration of this matter was needed with the opinion of the transport committee. Karima Delli (S&D, France) injected a more negative note, pointing out that, “at the end of the day, it's not us who take this decision but the civil liberties committee”.
Michael Cramer (Greens/EFA, Germany), who chairs the working group, said that the civil liberties committee was due to vote on the draft regulation in October. He said that the transport committee could begin work as soon as the S&D appoint a rapporteur. Ujhelyi said that he would be willing to take on that role. (Jean Comte)