Revision of the EU Visa suspension mechanism

Key points

The EESC:

• recognises the benefits of visa-free travel for citizens on both sides of these arrangements and the positive effects it has in terms of further strengthening the EU’s relations with its partners. The EU visa policy should remain a tool to facilitate people-to-people contacts, tourism and business, while preventing security risks to the EU;
• acknowledges that the security of the EU and its external borders has been profoundly impacted by recent geopolitical events. Therefore, the EESC supports the idea that the EU should be fully prepared to react swiftly to a wide range of potential future security risks, including hybrid threats;
• considers that efforts should be made to clarify the criteria for triggering the mechanism and at the same time ensure they are flexible enough to allow for their efficient and swift application where necessary;
• recommends that the Commission assess the necessity, proportionality and consequences of suspending an exemption from the visa requirement, taking into account the overall relations of the Union and its Member States with the third country concerned, how appropriate a suspension would be in remedying the situation, and the impact of a suspension on the rights of the nationals of the country concerned;
• believes that attention should be paid to the mobility needs of human rights defenders, especially if the human rights situation deteriorates in the third country concerned, and to the potential risks to their work and personal security posed by the activation of the suspension mechanism against their country;
• considers that investor citizenship schemes operated by third countries with visa-free arrangements represent a risk to Member States’ public policy and internal security and it should be possible to suspend the visa exemption for third countries which choose to operate such investor citizenship schemes, whereby citizenship is granted without any genuine link to the country concerned.