EU executive wants mandate for U.S. visa talks

The European Union should negotiate visa-free access to the United States as one entity and stop individual countries from brokering separate deals, the EU executive said on Monday.

"We will be the negotiator with the United States. It's simply not possible to abandon, renounce ... our European legislation," EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini told EU lawmakers, who backed his stance.

Frattini said he would ask EU governments on Tuesday to give it a mandate to handle the visa-free access question, which he said was an EU competence, while other issues such as armed sky marshals or intelligence cooperation could remain an issue for bilateral talks between individual states and Washington.

The Czech Republic angered the executive European Commission and a number of older member states when it signed a deal last week to make it easier for Czechs to travel to the United States visa-free in exchange for enhanced air security cooperation.

"We should not allow ourselves to be divided," Frattini said. Dutch EU lawmaker Sophia In't Veld said: "The Czechs going it alone will be highly destructive. We should not fall for U.S. divide and rule tactics."

Most EU states are part of the U.S. visa waiver programme, which allows people to travel without visas. But 11 out of the 12 mostly ex-communist countries that joined the bloc in 2004 and 2007, along with older member Greece, are not. U.S.

Malta is among the country holding talks with the US to lift visa requirements for Maltese travellers to the US.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff will hold talks with Frattini and other senior EU officials on Thursday in Slovenia on the issues. Before that he will sign another visa and air security deal with Estonia on Wednesday, as the United States says it wants deals with individual states. "U.S. law is very clear, visa waiver is a bilateral issue, so we do intend to apply our law by continuing talks with individual countries," a U.S. official told Reuters.

U.S. and EU officials said the issue was tricky. "It will be a difficult week within the European Union and with the United States," an EU diplomat said, saying governments such as the Czech republic might not agree to give the EU executive full negotiating powers. Some governments argue they would respect EU law even if they went ahead with their own talks with Washington.