4 ms·
Very curious to see what will happen. My sense says that US citizens won't need a visa for European travel... it would be very inconvenient for both Europe and
by tuna-piano 10y ago
Very curious to see what will happen. My sense says that US citizens won't need a visa for European travel... it would be very inconvenient for both Europe and the US (and also bad for the politicians).
My biggest question is who will give in, Europe or the US? If I recall, the US keeps good records of the percent of people from each country that commit crime, overstay their visa, etc. There has been some kerfuffle that we require citizens of one of the US' best friends, Israel, visas. But the US backs up that requirement showing the percentage of Israelis in America engaged in various activities. I'd imagine the same is similair for Romania / Bulgaria. So the US has good reasons.
At the same time, Europeans have a lot of pride and don't like thinking America controls them.
My uneducated guess: the Europeans strong need to not be controlled by America will mean that Europe will either implement, or give one last ultimatum and then implement.
US citizens will start calling their congress people when they realize they need a visa for their trip to Rome. I'd guess the congress people will give in and make the change, as there aren't so many Bulgarian / Romanian people causing trouble compared with angry travelers wanting to travel.
If the rule does get implemented, then the question would be, who is the greater political force: the European tourism industry losing revenue or the American traveling citizenry dealing with hassles?
- inetsee 10y agoDo you have any opinion as to the time line? My wife and I have plans to go to Europe (transiting Britain, going to Spain, Yugoslavia, France) in May 2017, and I was wondering if we need to look into getting visa(s) now?
- grep4master 10y agoNot anytime soon. You're most likely good to go. As a US citizen, you wouldn't need a visa to travel around the EU. Yugoslavia doesn't exist anymore, by the way. Some people from the Balkans might get mad at you ;)
- dragandj 10y agoYugoslavia does not exist any more, but it's still in the same place :)
- grep4master 10y agohaha I know. My point is that in this case we need to be more specific, because I don't know what the visa requirements for Bosnia are compared to, say, Croatia or Macedonia. While it's the same area, their migratory policies might be different now that they're independent.
- inetsee 10y agoSorry, meant the Czech Republic. I never have been good at geography.
- akmarinov 10y agoWell, all the EU parliament can do is ask. If the commission refuses, then parliament will have to sue the commission for not upholding the law, that can take a couple of years to resolve and by that time things will probably be a lot different. The process first began in 2014 and 3 years later, as you can see nothing has happened, don't expect anything to happen in the next 4-5 years.
- gpderetta 10y agoTechnically the parliament can give a vote of no confidence and dismiss the commission. Whether it will actually do that for this issue is another story.
- happy_tentacles 10y agoTruth be told, the press release is somewhat misleading. European Parliament is calling on European Commission to take a closer look at own Directive from 2001 (3 years before the countries in question joined the club). The European Parliament has run this file through a non-legislative procedure, which explains why the press release says "urge the Commission" and places the time limit for action in quotes. While it is a clear indication of what Members of the European Parliament stand for, there is no immediate legal implications of it - political yes... The European Parliament is a curious legal construct. There is a plenty of wiggle room to avoid any direct action by the European Commission.
- nyordanov 10y agoIMO, one of the major EU-related things that people are not aware of is that the European Parliament doesn't possess legislative initiative. EU laws are initiated by the European Commission (or) at the request of one or more member states.
- type0 10y agoEU parliament shouldn't be called a parliament as it doesn't do much other than to provide a false sense of democracy, they could call it something else, like "debating bait"...
- MR4D 10y agoI doubt it. They'll probably just go to London instead of Rome. Looks like a positive for Brexit.