Waiving the US visa goodbye

J. Sammut asks: What is happening regarding the US visa waiver with regard to Maltese citizens? This has now been a long time coming.

It is true that the removal of the US visa for Maltese citizens has been a long time coming and my view, like that of many others, is that it should be done as soon as possible.

It bears recalling that the requirement for a US visa is imposed by the US and not by us or by the EU. This situation is intolerable for two reasons.

The first is that US citizens are already exempt from a visa requirement to travel to the EU, including Malta. So there is no reason why the US should not treat Maltese citizens in the same way as US citizens are treated by Malta.

The second is that the citizens of 15 EU countries already benefit from visa-free travel to the US but the citizens of 12 other EU states, including Malta, do not do so yet. So the US is also treating EU countries differently.

The European Commission has long insisted with the US that this matter should be addressed. The EU has a stake in this issue because visa policy falls, in principle, under EU competence by virtue of the common EU visa policy. This also means that the European Commission would normally negotiate on behalf of EU countries on visa matters with third countries.

At the same time, the individual EU countries involved have also been making their views heard on the same subject, raising the issue with the US at the highest of levels. The Maltese government itself has done so on a number of occasions. This is to be expected, not least because individual countries have long-standing relations with the US, which is often a major political and commercial partner.

However, on its part, the US has insisted that it prefers to talk to individual countries directly rather than negotiate with the EU as a whole, through the Commission. This led to some tension on the matter. On the one hand, individual countries were reluctant to renounce the offer from the US to engage on the issue, just in case it might get them there faster. But, on the other, the US insistence on an individual approach risked dividing EU countries and strengthening the US bargaining position at the expense of the individual countries.

Despite these intricacies, some progress has been registered.

In August last year, the US adopted a law which will, in due course, allow the new EU member states, including Malta, to join the US regime for visa-free travel, known as the visa waiver programme. This law, which is still in the process of being implemented, started a process that is still underway. The visa would, in any case, be replaced by a new system, known as the electronic travel authorisation (ETA) which is already applied in countries such as Australia, requiring prospective travellers to announce their travelling plans, electronically, in advance. To remove the visa, the US is also imposing a number of conditions which are the subject of negotiations.

The US has since followed up the law with an offer to - so far - seven EU countries, including Malta, to sign up to a memorandum of understanding (MoU) enabling a roadmap towards visa-free travel. The Czech Republic, which was the first EU country to sign this MoU in February this year, was criticised for going it alone. But six other countries, among them Malta, soon followed suit. Malta signed the MoU this month.

The MoUs raised some tension between the Commission and the EU countries in question because of the possible conflict of competences involved, that is to say, which authority is responsible to do what when dealing with the US. Some conditions the US wants to impose on the individual countries as a price for the removal of visas have also given rise to such tension.

In the event, some two weeks ago, EU countries agreed on a so-called "twin track approach" whereby both the Commission and the individual countries involved would secure a meaningful role in seeing the end of the US visa. At the same time, the US seems now willing to respect EU competences and to talk to both the Commission and the countries involved according to their respective competences. On its part the European Parliament has long insisted on visa-free travel and on reciprocity. Only last week the matter was debated in the plenary session in Strasbourg and it will remain on our agenda in the months ahead.

On this occasion I reiterated that the removal of the US visa was important for citizens not just because it makes travelling easier and cheaper but also because it removes the discrimination that exists on the matter. Moreover, for citizens, the ultimate objective of getting it removed is more important than who actually manages to do it.

The saga goes on, although a light does finally appear at the end of the tunnel and a new era of visa-free regime for Maltese citizens travelling to the US is now said to be possible by the end of this year.

Let us hope that this will indeed be the case. But one thing is for sure. "Waiving" goodbye to the US visa has been anything but easy.

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