Brdo, 12/03/2008 (Agence Europe) - A real trans-Atlantic show-down on the visa regime took place on Thursday 13 March in Brdo Pri Kranju (Slovenia) between Europeans, prepared to do everything to save face but above all preserve their Community law, and the Americans, determined to negotiate bilateral agreements with member states that want to enter the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) more rapidly. Although this long distance confrontation has been going on for several days now, the meeting between the two blocks is expected to clarify things.
Tension mounted on the eve of the meeting when Estonia and Latvia signed protocols of bilateral understanding on Wednesday with the US, in order to get a visa waiver for their citizens. The US secretary of state for security, Michael Chertoff, who was expected to meet his European counterparts on Wednesday evening and Thursday, obtained the same thing from Czech leaders on 26 February and is expected to sign with the Slovaks in April. As for the Czechs, the Estonians and Latvians therefore agree to applying additional security measures requested by the US on trans-Atlantic flights in exchange for the visa waver for their citizens travelling to the US. Lithuania, the Slovak Republic and Hungary are also in negotiations with the US, according to one diplomatic source. The US is sticking to its guns and for whom it is out of the question that it stops bilateral negotiations. In an interview to Reuters in Berlin on Tuesday evening, Chertoff said that, “We have to admit country by country'. He also said that, “if we waited until every EU country qualified, it would delay new entrants for a long time. It think most of the new entrants would rather get in sooner than later”. Chertoff does not believe that these agreements contravene EU competencies.
The problem is that the EU, on the contrary, believes that the elements in these bilateral agreements should in the majority of cases be dealt with in the European remit, including visa policy. In Slovenia, Chertoff will immediately have to deal with the Italian European Commissioner, Franco Frattini, who said on Wednesday at a meeting for European interior ministers in Brdo that he expected cordiale but difficult negotiations with the US on visa wavers for member states. After this first meeting, the Slovenian minister of the interior, Dagutin Mate, indicated to the press that there had been intense negotiations with his European counterparts and Commissioner Frattini but admitted that, “at the moment, we have a plan to work how the negotiations will take place…A Plan the Americans would find acceptable”. This tactic is based on the compromise reached unanimously on Wednesday morning in Brussels between the EU ambassadors and which was backed up by ministers of the interior during dinner.
The Commissioner still repeated that it was in Washington's interest to have these waver agreements with the EU as a whole. This is why he asked on Tuesday at the Council for a negotiating brief to negotiate a visa waver for all Union member states. EU ambassadors therefore met on Wednesday morning for a special Coreper meeting in Brussels to attempt to find consensus on this mandate. They reached a double track agreement. The EU will allow member states to freely negotiate bilateral agreements with the Americans while respecting Community law and fully informing the Commission. Member states will all respect the “red lines” set out on 5 March (EUROPE 9617) and the principle on which the Commission and Slovenian presidency negotiate with the US for a European mandate, the details of which still need discussing. Although we unveiled part of the contents in the Commission mandate in the last edition (EUROPE 9620), the rest of it remains voluntarily secret insofar as it could upset future relations. The EU27 agreement allows the Union to be better positioned than before in dealing with the Americans. The same diplomatic sources said that optimism reigned a Brdo and explained that the US may agree to the famous red lines. The time table planned at the beginning of the week by Mr Frattini may therefore be the right one. He predicted that the June summit with the US would be the right time for a political agreement form Washington, which even thought that a new trans-Atlantic agreement could be implementation by the end of the year.
European Parliament sidelined. After his press conference, Mr Frattini informed EUROPE on Wednesday that when negotiations formally began between the EU and US, the European Parliament had the right to be, “informed about developments”. Whether parliament would be formally consulted by assent, Commissioner Frattini said, “no, this is the third pillar” (police and legal cooperation). The mandate actually involves both the first pillar (Community) and the third pillar but the presence of inter-ornamental elements justify the legal basis of the mandate as based on Article 300 of the treaty, explained a legal expert. (B.C.)