Member States were called upon, on Thursday 16 February, in the framework of a meeting of the Strategic Committee on Immigration, Frontiers and Asylum (SCIFA) of the EU Council, to discuss the future of visa policy and the possible reform of the mechanism for suspending the granting of visa-free regimes.
On the basis of a note from the Swedish Presidency and with several Member States advocating for a more restrictive use of the EU’s visa policy towards non-cooperative third countries on the return of irregular migrants, they were to discuss the criteria and modalities for triggering this suspension and the grounds for suspension.
The Swedish Presidency thus focused on what it called an “asymmetry” between the criteria for granting visa-free travel to third countries and the grounds for suspending it (such as a substantial increase of more than 50% in refusals of entry to third-country nationals or overstays or a substantial increase in the number of asylum applications from third-country nationals for which the recognition rate is low).
For the Presidency, the criteria for granting visa-free regimes are thus “much broader”. On the grounds for suspension, it notes that “experience seems to indicate that, even if limited to migration and security, the current grounds are insufficient to cover all the situations where a third country abuses its visa-free regime”.
The “non-alignment of the visa policy of some Western Balkan countries, which has recently led to a substantial increase in irregular migration flows to the Schengen area, is one example”, the Swedish Presidency writes in its note.
“Not only was visa policy alignment not a requirement under the visa liberalisation dialogues with the EU’s neighbouring countries,” the note adds, “but the criteria for suspension refer only to nationals of the third country which enjoys the visa-free regime and not to third-country nationals that it lets transit through its territory”.
In the area of internal security, “there might also be room for better spelling out the circumstances that could lead to suspension of the visa-free regime, for example the investor citizenship schemes put in place by some third countries and which represent a serious risk for the security of the Schengen area”.
In 2013, the European Parliament and the EU Council adopted a first visa suspension mechanism to respond to the emergency and to suspend, for a short period of time, the exemption from the visa obligation of nationals of a third country that may cause problems. It was revised in 2017 to make it more easily applicable (see EUROPE 10920/9).
Link to the note: https://aeur.eu/f/5ct (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)