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The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

economist.com

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Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#81

Post by FabHK »

metachris wrote: post #4

The reason being that the US still requires visas from 5 EU countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania. And "The EU says it notified the United States in April 2014 that it was not meeting EU visa rules, and had given the country two years to comply."

Also note that it's not binding, it has to go to the Commission first.

And, again, it's been an ongoing dispute since 2014. But still probably a reflection of the times.

(Note that the US Visa Waiver program is opened to countries that fulfil certain criteria in terms of (high) percentage of visa applications granted, and (low) percentage of admitted people overstaying. So, the US basically argues that they stick to their (country by country) criteria, while the EU insists on equal treatment.)

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#82

Post by colordrops »

harigov wrote: post #6

What is going on in this world? I was reading news today that the parties on the right side of political spectrum are gaining ground all over Europe. US already has Republicans in power. Every country is becoming more nationalistic. What is driving this change? AFAICT there are no major issues that should have caused this.

People are talking about globalism in response to your question, but that answer is beating around the bush. The truth is that neo-liberal elites have been slowly weakening democracies and taking more and more wealth and power. They recognize that the inequality gap is now too large, but in their greed and competitiveness they have been unable to relinquish their grasp despite and a critical mass of unrest is fomenting.

An example is how the US Democrats clearly needed to support an anti-establishment progressive to win the election but in their greed for power and wealth they maintained the status quo rather than doing something that would help the common man, giving up the election to a nationalist.

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#83

Post by mi100hael »

pklausler wrote: post #61
ginko wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nation states are an invention of the 19th century. Give the Middle Ages more credit.

Surely the U.S.A. (a 1776 result of the scientific Enlightenment responsible for every single improvement to human life, assuming that you don't want to be a disease-ridden illiterate peasant lucky to make it to your 30's) meets any reasonable categorization of a nation-state. 46% of Americans believe that humans were created in their current form sometime in the last 10,000 years by a Bronze Age deity fond of stonin…

[Citation Needed]

I realize there are some folks with their head in the sand, but I've never once met someone who actually believed that and I'm not even coastal.

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#84

Post by maho »

metachris wrote: post #4

The reason being that the US still requires visas from 5 EU countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania. And "The EU says it notified the United States in April 2014 that it was not meeting EU visa rules, and had given the country two years to comply."

You are forgetting the "Visa Waiver Program". Essentially, the rest of us Europeans are required to fill out detailed forms, pay a fee for filling out those forms, and then get a government-issued authorization for "visa free" travel. Right.

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#85

Post by masklinn »

harigov wrote: post #6

What is going on in this world? I was reading news today that the parties on the right side of political spectrum are gaining ground all over Europe. US already has Republicans in power. Every country is becoming more nationalistic. What is driving this change? AFAICT there are no major issues that should have caused this.

This specific situation is not that, it's a problem with visa waiver reciprocity: all US citizens get a waiver to the EU, but not all EU countries get waiver in the US. In 2001 the EU adopted a rule that reciprocity is required for an EU visa waiver.

The US were notified about the non-reciprocity issue in 2014 alongside Australia, Brunei, Canada and Japan, published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 12 April 2014[0]. The situation with Australia and Japan had been resolved by April 2016[1], Brunei resolved it in April 2016[2], and Canada is in the process of resolving it and will be implementing reciprocity through 2017 but there had been no such evidence from the US by December 2016[3]:

> Following intensive and coordinated efforts and sustained engagement between the EU and Canada at political and technical level ahead of the 16th EU-Canada Summit on 30 October 2016 in Brussels, Canada provided a clear timeline for achieving full visa waiver reciprocity with Bulgaria and Romania, the two remaining EU countries whose citizens still require visas. On 3 October 2016 Canada announced that it will lift the visa requirement from 1 May 2017 for Bulgarian and Romanian travellers who have held a Canadian temporary resident visa in the past 10 years or who hold a valid U.S. non-immigrant visa. The rest of the travellers will become visa-free as from 1 December 2017.

> Despite the stepping up of political and technical contacts, there have not been comparable indications of progress towards the lifting of visas with the U.S.

[0] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX...

[1] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1345_en.htm

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-is-new/news/news/2016...

[3] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-16-4484_en.htm

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#86

Post by rbanffy »

perseusprime11 wrote: post #62
vmarsy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what most likely would happen as most of these agreements is full reciprocity. i.e., like Europeans have to pay $14 for the ESTA visa waiver to travel in the US, Americans would have to do the same and register online. That visa waiver would hopefully work for the entire E.U. Or, like Australia, Brunei, Japan, and Canada which were similarly notified and implemented the changes, the US will do the same. http://www.in…

Can we do full reciprocity in terms of taxes and tariffs on imports?

The US would need reasonable public healthcare first.

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#87

Post by Findeton »

lend000 wrote: post #73
castis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah? What makes you say that?

The EU is composed of seven major institutions, only one of which has direct representation by voters (the EU parliament), and the number of representatives of each country is (roughly) proportional to their size, so any given voter of a small EU country has effectively zero representation. The EU is very far from a democratic, representative system, and yet it hold tremendous power over its 'constituents.' Not to me…

The problem is that the EU is organized in such a way that it is at an intermediate stage between it being just a bunch of different nations and it being something similar to the USA. We need more EU and less nationalism to become something similar to the USA, we need a bigger EU government and smaller nations governments. The EU government is about 1% of the GDP and the nations governments are 50%, we need to reverse those numbers.

Of course I agree that the EU is not very democratic right, we also need to change that.

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#88

Post by edko »

In the past 8 years, the relations between the EU and the US had improved a lot (despite there being some high profile espionage scandals). I truly hope both sides can work together, and solve minor issues like these. It would really suck to go back to the times of "Freedom Fries", especially with the threat of inner rupture, and Russian pressure in the Baltics.

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#89

Post by ascorbic »

Exofunctor wrote: post #58

> What is driving this change? AFAICT there are no major issues that should have caused this. I honestly can't imagine how you could avoid exposure to any of the incredible amount of discontent in Europe right now. European leaders have been importing millions(!) of people from incredibly violent, theocratic, illiterate, and regressive regions, to the detriment of peaceful, secular, educated, and liberal Europeans wh…

> I'm not even European

Now there's a surprise.

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#90

Post by lispm »

Exofunctor wrote: post #78
lispm wrote: post #72

> Most people in Europe are not dumb enough to fall for this. Most people in Europe are not dumb enough to fall for your nonsense. > and yes, it's a real quote It isn't. > I'm not even European I am.

> Most people in Europe are not dumb enough to fall for your nonsense. Feel free to actually try to refute anything I said. > It isn't. It is according to Avraham Burg, and I'm not sure there is anyone more qualified to make such a claim.

> Feel free to actually try to refute anything I said.

Refute right-wing propaganda?

> It is according to Avraham Burg, and I'm not sure there is anyone more qualified to make such a claim.

Point me to a recording where Schulz said anything like that. On the contrary, Schulz has a decade long track record working for Germany and the European Union.

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