PURPOSE: to conclude the
Agreement between the European Union and Trinidad and Tobago 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. On 9 October 2014, the Council addressed negotiating
directives to the Commission.
The negotiations on the
visa waiver agreement with Trinidad and Tobago and the four other
Caribbean countries were opened on 12 November 2014 in Brussels.
The agreement was initialled by the chief negotiators on 15
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 Trinidad and Tobago 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 Trinidad and Tobago 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 Trinidad and Tobago 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 Trinidad and Tobago 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: 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 Trinidad and Tobago
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
Trinidad and Tobago 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
Trinidad and Tobago 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.