Final negotiations are our competence, European Commission insists

The European Commission insisted yesterday that the final negotiations between the EU and the US on visas have yet to be concluded by Brussels, which has competence over such matters.

The Commission was approached by The Times following the signing of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Malta and the US yesterday.

"We see nothing really wrong with this signing as long as it respects the EU negotiations mandate as agreed this week between all 27 EU ambassadors," a Commission spokesman said.

"If the agreement signed only covers bilateral issues between Malta and the US, such as the placing of sky marshals on flights between the two countries, we will have no problem. We will obviously need to have a close look at the agreement to verify its contents."

Only last Wednesday, EU ambassadors agreed on a new set of rules giving a new mandate for the Commission to conclude, on their behalf, negotiations with the US on the visa waiver programme. The mandate is now scheduled to be endorsed by the 27 Justice and Home Affairs Ministers meeting in Luxembourg next week before the final round of negotiations start.

"There are many elements in these negotiations, which are exclusively the competence of the European Commission," the spokesman said. "According to the treaties, it is the competence of the Commission to negotiate visa issues on behalf of all the 27 member states. That is why we now have a clear mandate," the spokesman said.

Asked whether the Commission would have preferred Malta not signing the MoU with the US, the spokesman would only say that "there is nothing wrong in this signing. Malta was not the first member state to do so".

The mandate was needed following the signing of an individual MoU, similar to the one signed in Malta, by the Czech Republic last February and which had infuriated the European Commission.

As the Commission had been negotiating for years, without success, the possibility of removing the need for a visa for all EU citizens travelling to the US, the American government offered the interested member states, including Malta, a bilateral MoU indicating that countries signing it can expect some relaxation in its tough approach to visas, particularly in respect of the visa refusal rate criterion for assessing a country's prospects for joining the programme.

Against the Commission's wish, the Czech Republic was the first to sign the agreement followed by Estonia, Latvia, Hungary and Slovakia.

Through the new negotiations mandate, member states are now prohibited from agreeing to any measures allowing the US access to EU databases such as the Schengen Information System, the Visa Information System and Eurodac - a system of fingerprint data. The agreed mandate lays down that no additional requirement should be imposed on the sharing of airline passenger data over and above the 2007 EU-US agreement.

"The existing agreement to share data on lost and stolen passports with Interpol should suffice and anything beyond this should be agreed at EU level," the draft agreement to be adopted next week states.

The Commission has already said it wants to conclude the negotiations with the US by the end of this year.