PURPOSE: to conclude the
Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Vanuatu on
the short-stay visa waiver.
PROPOSED ACT: Council
Decision.
ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN
PARLIAMENT: Council may adopt the act only if Parliament has given
its consent to the act.
BACKGROUND: Regulation
(EU) No 509/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council
amended Regulation (EC) No 539/2001 listing the third countries
whose nationals must be in possession of visas when crossing the
external borders of the Member States and those whose nationals are
exempt from that requirement.
The Regulation was
adopted on 20 May 2014 and entered into force on 9 June
2014.
In July 2014, the
Commission presented a Recommendation to the Council to authorise
it to start negotiations on visa waiver agreements with each of
the following 17 countries: Dominica, Grenada, Kiribati,
Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Saint Lucia, Saint
Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste,
Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, the United Arab Emirates and
Vanuatu.
The negotiations on the
visa waiver agreement with Vanuatu were opened on 19 November 2014
in Brussels. The agreement was initialled by the chief
negotiators on 4 December 2014.
The Commission considers
that the objectives set by the Council in its negotiating
directives were attained and that the draft visa waiver agreement
is acceptable to the Union.
CONTENT: the Commission
proposes that the Council approve the Agreement between the
European Union and the Republic of Vanuatu on the short-stay visa
waiver.
The content of the
agreement may be summarised as follows:
Purpose and duration
of stay: the agreement provides for
visa-free travel for the citizens of the European Union and for the
citizens of Vanuatu when travelling to the territory of the other
Contracting Party for a maximum period of 90 days in any 180-day
period. The agreement takes into account the situation of the
Member States that do not yet apply the Schengen acquis in full. As
long as they are not part of the Schengen area without internal
borders, the visa waiver confers a right for the nationals of
Vanuatu to stay for 90 days in any 180-day on the territory of each
of those Member States (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Romania),
independently of the period calculated for the whole Schengen
area.
A provision has been
included in the agreement stating that Vanuatu may suspend or
terminate the agreement only in respect of all the Member States of
the European Union and that the Union may also only suspend or
terminate the agreement in respect of all of its Member
States
Scope of the
application: the visa waiver covers
all categories of persons (ordinary, diplomatic,
service/official and special passport holders) travelling for all
kinds of purposes, except for the purpose of carrying out a paid
activity. For this latter category, each Member State and also
Vanuatu remain free to impose the visa requirement on the citizens
of the other Party in accordance with the applicable Union or
national law.
The Member States and
Vanuatu reserve the right to refuse entry into and short stay in
their territories if one or more of these conditions are not
met.
Territorial
application: in the case of France
and the Netherlands, the visa waiver would entitle nationals of
Vanuatu to stay only in those Member States European
territories.
The provisions of the
Agreement do not apply to the United Kingdom and
Ireland.
The Agreement
establishes a Joint Committee for the management of the
Agreement, which shall adopt its rules of procedure.