PURPOSE: to conclude the Agreement between the
European Union and the Republic of Colombia 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.
Regulation (EU) No 509/2014 transferred 19
countries to Annex II, which lists the third countries whose
nationals are exempt from the visa requirement. Those 19
countries are: Colombia, Dominica, Grenada, Kiribati, Marshall
Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Peru, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent
and the Grenadines, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga,
Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, the United Arab Emirates and
Vanuatu.
Colombia and Peru were,
according to Recital 5 of Regulation (EU) No 509/2014 and the joint
declaration issued at the time of adoption, subject to a
specific procedure which required a further assessment of those
countries against the relevant criteria, before the Commission
could present to the Council recommendations for decisions
authorising the opening of negotiations on visa waiver agreements
with those two countries.
In October 2014, the Commission adopted a report
broadly assessing the situation of Colombia. The Commission
concluded that the significant improvement of the Colombian
economic and social situation in recent years provided
justification that Colombians should be granted visa-free access to
the Member States' territory. In addition, the visa waiver
agreement contains the necessary safeguards to suspend or terminate
the agreement should this be required to avoid security or
migration risks for the Union.
In March 2015, the Commission presented a
Recommendation to the Council to authorise it to start negotiations
on visa waiver agreements with Colombia and Peru. On 19 May 2015,
the Council addressed negotiating directives to the Commission. The
negotiations with Colombia were opened on 20 May 2015 in Brussels.
The agreement was initialled by the chief negotiators on 9 June
2015.
The Commission considered 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 Colombia 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 Colombia when travelling to
the territory of the other Contracting Party for a maximum
period of 90 days in any 180-day period.
In
order to safeguard equal treatment of all EU citizens, a provision
has been included in the agreement stating that Colombia 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.
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
Colombia to stay for 90 days in any 180-day on the territory of
each of those Member States (currently Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus
and Romania), independently of the period calculated for the whole
Schengen area.
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
Colombia remain free to impose the visa requirement on the citizens
of the other Party in accordance with the applicable Union or
national law. In order to ensure harmonised implementation, a joint
declaration is attached to the agreement on the interpretation of
the category of persons travelling for the purpose of carrying out
a paid activity.
Biometric passports: the
Agreement includes a number of declarations:
- on the introduction of biometric passports by
Colombia, declaring that Colombia commits to issuing biometric
passports by 31 August 2015 at the latest and that failure to
introduce biometric/passports by 31 December 2015 constitutes
sufficient grounds for suspension of the agreement;
- on cooperation concerning irregular migration with a
commitment to conclude a readmission agreement upon request
by either Party, in particular in case of an increase of irregular
migration and in problems regarding the readmission of irregular
migrants. Failure to conclude a readmission agreement upon request
constitutes sufficient grounds for suspension of the
agreement.
Territorial application: in
the case of France and the Netherlands, the visa waiver would
entitle nationals of Colombia 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.