Parliament asks EU Commission to press for full US-EU visa reciprocity | Hacker News Reader

Parliament asks EU Commission to press for full US-EU visa reciprocity

europarl.europa.eu

63 pointsmantesso21 comments

Very curious to see what will happen. My sense says that US citizens won't need a visa for European travel... it would be very inconvenient for both Europe and the US (and also bad for the politicians).

My biggest question is who will give in, Europe or the US? If I recall, the US keeps good records of the percent of people from each country that commit crime, overstay their visa, etc. There has been some kerfuffle that we require citizens of one of the US' best friends, Israel, visas. But the US backs up that requirement showing the percentage of Israelis in America engaged in various activities. I'd imagine the same is similair for Romania / Bulgaria. So the US has good reasons.

At the same time, Europeans have a lot of pride and don't like thinking America controls them.

My uneducated guess: the Europeans strong need to not be controlled by America will mean that Europe will either implement, or give one last ultimatum and then implement.

US citizens will start calling their congress people when they realize they need a visa for their trip to Rome. I'd guess the congress people will give in and make the change, as there aren't so many Bulgarian / Romanian people causing trouble compared with angry travelers wanting to travel.

If the rule does get implemented, then the question would be, who is the greater political force: the European tourism industry losing revenue or the American traveling citizenry dealing with hassles?

Do you have any opinion as to the time line? My wife and I have plans to go to Europe (transiting Britain, going to Spain, Yugoslavia, France) in May 2017, and I was wondering if we need to look into getting visa(s) now?

Not anytime soon. You're most likely good to go. As a US citizen, you wouldn't need a visa to travel around the EU. Yugoslavia doesn't exist anymore, by the way. Some people from the Balkans might get mad at you ;)

Yugoslavia does not exist any more, but it's still in the same place :)

haha I know. My point is that in this case we need to be more specific, because I don't know what the visa requirements for Bosnia are compared to, say, Croatia or Macedonia. While it's the same area, their migratory policies might be different now that they're independent.

Sorry, meant the Czech Republic. I never have been good at geography.

Well, all the EU parliament can do is ask. If the commission refuses, then parliament will have to sue the commission for not upholding the law, that can take a couple of years to resolve and by that time things will probably be a lot different. The process first began in 2014 and 3 years later, as you can see nothing has happened, don't expect anything to happen in the next 4-5 years.

Technically the parliament can give a vote of no confidence and dismiss the commission. Whether it will actually do that for this issue is another story.

Truth be told, the press release is somewhat misleading. European Parliament is calling on European Commission to take a closer look at own Directive from 2001 (3 years before the countries in question joined the club).

The European Parliament has run this file through a non-legislative procedure, which explains why the press release says "urge the Commission" and places the time limit for action in quotes.

While it is a clear indication of what Members of the European Parliament stand for, there is no immediate legal implications of it - political yes... The European Parliament is a curious legal construct.

There is a plenty of wiggle room to avoid any direct action by the European Commission.

IMO, one of the major EU-related things that people are not aware of is that the European Parliament doesn't possess legislative initiative. EU laws are initiated by the European Commission (or) at the request of one or more member states.

EU parliament shouldn't be called a parliament as it doesn't do much other than to provide a false sense of democracy, they could call it something else, like "debating bait"...

I doubt it. They'll probably just go to London instead of Rome. Looks like a positive for Brexit.

>Citizens of Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania still cannot enter US territory without a visa, while US citizens can travel to all EU countries visa-free.

The submitted article is more like a newswire bulletin rather than an explanatory story. Therefore, many readers (especially those in USA) will not have the background on why those particular countries don't have visa exemptions. One link I found has a little more info. E.g. USA wants more data exchange (ostensibly to screen terrorists) and those countries haven't complied.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/justice-home-affairs/news/e...

The reason why Polish citizens still need visas to US is that in the 90s, right after fall of communism in the country, a LOT of people went to US on tourist visas and simply stayed. By the time US was reconsidering whether to grant visa-free travel to certain European countries, Poland was above the arbitrarily chosen % of people who traveled to US on tourist visas and stayed, so it was decided that visas for Poles would remain a requirement.

Fast forward to now, and it's almost silly - I don't know any young Poles who would want to work in the US, literally any EU country is a better choice, and I know loads of people working in France, Spain, Germany, UK, Italy, Austria and Sweden, to name a few. US was a massive thing 27 years ago when people got passports for the first time and US was the big world, but nowadays? With its difficult job market, expensive healthcare, barely any employee protections, why would we go there?

I'd still love to visit to see all the touristy places in the US, but the idea of spending hundreds of dollars just go get to a nearest embassy, have to talk to a consul, prove to them that I am definitely not going to US to work, pay to get a visa, and then have to stress over whether TSA agents are having a good or a bad day and whether they will want to search my phone/laptop or not - no, thanks.

>why would we go there?

Not a general response, but at least for tech jobs, salaries in the US are excellent. Money isn't everything but from what I see, you take a huge pay cut working anywhere but the US. Even Canada doesn't come close to competing.

If you take into account the cost of living (and taxes), some other countries might look more interesting.

Well yes, obviously tech jobs are "worth it" but they are an exception, not a rule. And most Polish people went to work physical jobs which at the time paid a lot better in the US than the top-skilled professions in Poland, but that's no longer the case.

I think the question is why would you go there illegally?

The link you provided writes about 4 countries (not named), but the list contains 5 countries (higher in the article). So one of the countries complied with the data exchange.

Another issues is that US data protection laws are less strict then EU ones, so transferring EU citizens data to the US is not considered safe, and EC is not happy that some countries do that (and I'm sure citizens of those countries are not happy either).

From my point of view visas should be symmetrical, if you force me to get visa to get to your country, then your citizens need it to get to mine - very clean solution.

As far as they say in our media ( Bulgaria ), the reason for not allowing visa-free travel is that the amount of declined visa in my country (15%) is way above the required one (3%).

As someone who really wants to return to Europe in the next couple of years for vacation, this really complicates matters.

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