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Brussels Urges Washington to Lift Visas for Bulgarians, Romanians
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European home affairs Commissioner, Swedish, Cecilia Malmstrom gives a news conference during an European Interior home affairs and Justice Ministers council at the EU headquaters in Brussels, Belgium 02 December 2010. Photo by EPA/BGNES
The European Commission has renewed its calls on the United States to drop the visa requirement for citizens of Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus and Poland, making travel visa-free for all EU states.
The issue was on the work agenda of the biannual EU-USA meeting in the field of Justice and Internal Affairs, held on Wednesday and Thursday in Washington. The European Executive was represented by the IA commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, the US were represented attorney general Eric Holder and the secretary for domestic security, Janet Napolitano.
"The position of the European Commission remains unchanged. We want all EU member states to join the US Visa Waiver Program," a spokesperson of the commissioner told the Polish state-owned radio.
While the Americans enjoy traveling without visas for up to 90 days in EU, Romanian, Polish, Cyprus and Bulgarian citizens traveling to the United States have to get visas.
Washington authorities consider these four EU member states do not fulfill certain criteria to be exempted from the compulsory visa regime yet, including the issuing of biometric passports and meeting the visa refusal threshold.
In March this year Greece joined countries such as Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Baltic countries in the US Visa Waiver Program (VWP).
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