PURPOSE: to conclude the
Agreement between the European Union and Samoa 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 Samoa were opened on 19 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 andSamoa 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 Samoa 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 Samoa 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 Samoa 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 Samoa 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 Samoa 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
Samoa 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.