EU-US talks to start this week

Talks on the entry of EU member states, including Malta, into the US Visa Waiver Programme (VWP) are set to start this week.

This follows the go-ahead by EU Justice Ministers last Friday to the European Commission to negotiate the terms of the programme on their behalf.

Speaking to the press on Monday, Commission Vice-President Jacques Barrot, who is also acting Justice Commissioner, promised to pursue the talks in an active and dynamic fashion.

"There is a strong will on the side of the Commission to fulfil the mandate in order to end this injustice, implying we have two categories of citizens in the EU," the French commissioner said.

Two weeks ago, Malta signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the US, considered to be the first step for the island to be integrated into the US VWP, permitting Maltese citizens to enter the US without a visa.

US citizens who visit the EU travel to the continent without a visa.

Only 15 EU member states are part of the US VWP. The member states that joined the EU in 2004 have been demanding the same treatment since.

Under the approach agreed last week, the European Commission and individual member states will be allowed to negotiate only in areas that fall under their own powers. This means EU governments will be allowed to strike a deal on such issues as sky marshals and national data exchange while the Commission will be in charge, among other things, of an electronic system for travel authorisation.

According to Mr Barrot, the wish to have the VWP for all EU citizens shouldn't mean the Commission will accept a deal at all costs.

The system, designed to collect data electronically, is seen in Washington as necessary to determine whether there are security risks in permitting certain citizens to travel to the US.

As the Commission had been negotiating for years without success the issue 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 VWP. Against the Commission's wish, the Czech Republic was the first to sign such an agreement followed by Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Slovakia and Malta.

Through the new negotiations mandate for the Commission, member states are now prohibited from agreeing to any measure allowing the US access to EU databases such as the Schengen Information System, the Visa Information System and Eurodac, which is a system of fingerprint data.

The agreed mandate also states that no additional requirement should be imposed on the sharing of airline passenger data above the 2007 EU-US agreement.

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