Strasbourg, 14 December 2016
Opening Remarks
Mr President,
Honourable Members,
I welcome the opportunity to discuss this important matter, being already fully aware of your expectations.
In October I discussed this with the Members of the LIBE committee. It should be clear that we all share the same objective.
Full visa reciprocity is a central principle of our visa policy framework.
With the United States and Canada,
it is a challenging and sensitive issue, and we all hope for tangible progress.
Before responding to the questions, let me start with the good news concerning Canada.
As I told you in the past, I used the window of opportunity offered to us: the EU-Canada Summit.
A series of meetings and discussions were held ahead, in order to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement.
I took the plane myself to meet in person the Canadian Immigration Minister John McCallum in order to address the real situation at political, and not at technocratic level.
We had a very constructive discussion with the Minister and we agreed to engage in a political process to address each other’s concerns and make the lift of visa obligations for Romania and Bulgaria possible.
Indeed, and as I had hinted in my meeting with LIBE, Canada took a positive decision,in line with the commitment of McCallum in July.
At the summit, Canada announced its decision to lift, in late 2017, the visa requirement for all Bulgarian and Romanian citizens.
Moreover, certain categories of Bulgarian and Romanian travellers – who visited Canada in the past 10 years or who currently possess a valid visa issued by the United States –will already become visa-free from 1 May 2017.
We all welcomed very much this outcome. It is a strong indication that diplomatic channels and engagement can achieve positive results.
On this point I would like to thank Members of Parliament for their constructive contributions too.
We worked in close coordination with Bulgaria and Romania, and they played a central role in addressing Canadian concerns.
We have to continue on this path to ensure that full visa waiver is achieved.
The Commission will continue to do its part, in full cooperation with both Member States.
The situation with the United States is different. While I continued discussions with our U.S. partners, most recently at the EU-U.S. JHA Ministerial meeting on 5 December in Washington, there is no progress to report.
But I want to assure you, that we will keep this issue high on the agenda with the new Administration and Congress.
I will personally immediately engage in contacts with my new counterparts.
I call on all of you to give a chance for the political discussion to take place, and to explain the mutual obligations, reservations, goals, and work to find a solution.
The role of Congress is crucial. The Visa Waiver Program cannot be expanded without Congress, particularly if Member States do not meet the thresholds of US legislation.
It seems certain that, temporarily suspending the visa waiver for U.S. citizens, would immediately lead to a visa requirement imposed on all EU citizens.
We are aiming for the opposite!
Not a reciprocal visa requirement, but a reciprocal visa waiver.
Let me be very clear: the Commission would not hesitate to adopt the respective acts if that could improve the situation of EU citizens and lead to the visa waiver for all.
At the same time, the Commission has a responsibility to inform you, the co-legislators, about negative consequences on the EU and its citizens from the implementation of our rules.
And this leads me to your questions. The Visa Regulation says: the Commission shall adopt the delegated act.
But there are also other requirements and obligations to be followed which are difficult to reconcile with this obligation,
and which are equally important. The same Regulation says that “the Commission shall take into account the consequences of the suspension of the exemption from the visa requirement for the external relations of the Union and its Member States with the third country in question.”
The approach we put forward back in April outlined these adverse consequences.
We still consider that the negative impacts we identified, which were not questioned by other institutions and stakeholders, should be taken fully into account.
If a visa requirement is reintroduced it would be difficult to explain to millions of EU citizens travelling to the U.S. every year that the EU serves their interest and that the EU action was appropriate in this case.
Would legal arguments be convincing for thousands of EU citizens that would likely lose their jobs due to the expected decrease of U.S. visitors?
I very much doubt that. A recent study for the World Travel & Tourism Council, suggests that suspending the visa waiver would annually lead to a 22% drop in visitors to the EU or 5,5 million fewer visitors from the U.S. and Canada.
This would be equal to a loss of EUR 6,8 billion annually, risking the loss of 140.000 jobs in the tourism industry.
The most affected Member States would be Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Netherlands and Poland.
Can we really afford that loss?
Dear Members of Parliament,
we are in a very unpleasant situation, but determined to work to achieve visa free for all EU Citizens to the United States, as we managed to do with Canada.
Let us work together in this effort.
Closing Remarks
I heard your interventions very carefully.
I want to assure you again, that we are on the same side.
We share the same objective, and that is nothing less than full visa reciprocity for all our citizens.
Our approach with Canada brought positive results.
We didn’t resort to unilateral suspensions there.
We didn’t damage our bilateral relations. On the contrary.
With patient engagement, diplomatic contacts and explanations from all sides, we managed to get a concrete roadmap to visa liberalisation.
Your role, dear Members, was crucial in that respect.
I call on you to show some patience while the political transition in the US is completed.
Once the new Administration is fully in place, we will make the point as strongly as we can.
EU citizens in their vast majority, are not security threats.
For those very few that could potentially be, our security framework is in place, and is getting stronger every day.
We will continue to work hard in close cooperation with the Member States concerned, and with you, to resolve the remaining cases and will keep you fully informed.
Next week, as we committed last July – we will present the state of play, in a second followup to our April communication.
The road ahead will not be easy. But working together, we can bring results in the case of the US also.