PURPOSE: to conclude the
Agreement between the European Union and Saint Vincent and the
Grenadines 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 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and the
four other Caribbean countries were opened on 12 November 2014 in
Brussels.
The agreement was
initialled by the chief negotiators on 11 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 andSaint Vincent
and the Grenadines 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 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 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 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 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 Saint Vincent and the
Grenadines 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 Saint Vincent and the
Grenadines 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 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
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
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 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.