On Tuesday 14 July, the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) adopted by 37 votes to 21, with 6 abstentions, a resolution proposed by its chair, Spain’s Juan Fernando López Aguilar (S&D), urging the Commission to take action against the USA, which still requires visas for Bulgarian, Croatian, Cypriot and Romanian citizens to travel to its territory.
As the European Parliament has already done a few years ago, the LIBE Committee resolution again asks the Commission to present a delegated act to suspend the visa-free regime for the United States for 12 months under the reciprocity mechanism.
According to EU law, if a third country does not lift the visa requirement within 24 months of official notification of a situation of non-reciprocity, the European Commission must adopt a delegated act suspending the visa waiver for its nationals for 12 months. The European Parliament and the EU Council may both oppose such a delegated act.
The non-reciprocity situation affecting Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Romania was formally raised on 12 April 2014 (at the time, Poland was also concerned, but Polish citizens have been able to travel to the US without visas since last year), the European Parliament notes, so the deadline for the Commission to act expired on 12 April 2016.
Parliament had already asked the Commission to comply with the rules in a resolution adopted in plenary in March 2017.
But the Commission had refused to take this step, even though the texts were binding on it (see EUROPE 11779/5, EUROPE 11798/9). Commissioner Dimítris Avramópoulos had in fact argued that this step could not be taken with an economic and diplomatic partner of this scale.
The resolution will come back to plenary in the autumn with an oral question to the Commission, says the European Parliament in a statement.
Link to the resolution: https://bit.ly/3fwilQL (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)