US citizens will need a visa to visit Europe starting in 2021
cnn.com
cnn.com
- EU is introducing ETIAS, an electronic authorisation system which is pretty much modeled after the US ESTA system (used by visa-free nationals). It will apply to all countries which currently enjoy the visa-free regime with the EU and that includes USA. So, technically it is not a visa, but your details will be pre-checked and it will cost €7 (compared to $14 for US ESTA). Ironically, after Brexit, this requirement will also apply to UK.
- There is a separate dispute between EU and US, because US imposes visas on five EU states (Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, Romania and Cyprus). According the EU law, all EU countries should be treated equally or otherwise reciprocal measures should apply. There have been calls within the EU to respond tit for tat and impose EU visas on US citizens, if the issue does not get resolved soon.
As an EU citizen, I can just add that I support both initiatives.
From https://www.eulisa.europa.eu/Activities/Large-Scale-It-Syste...
" ETIAS is a pre-travel authorisation system for visa exempt travellers."
Video explaining the system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=orrBJiXAcSU
Makes sense, don’t it?
An American can still drive to Europe
As a EU citizen I benefit from freedom of movement within the EU, why would I want extra barriers being erected between nations?
I struggle to see a benefit here, just downsides.
Edit: I don't seem to have been clear. I know intra EU travel will remain unencumbered, my point was to illustrate that both the parent and I have been benefiting from that unencumbered travel, so why go the opposite way with other nations.
>"I believe in freedom of movement between EU nations"
I can't find your quotation anywhere and I made a similar remark.
"I benefit from freedom of movement within the EU" ???
(I'm not taking sides, as I don't know enough. But there is a big potential downside here).
Neither does the ETIAS system that the EU is introducing. The article for some reason decided to ignore the existence of ESTA altogether and then call the identical (but cheaper) ETIAS system a visa.
That is what I, and presumably several other commentators, have been responding to.
Edit: I see that one post referred to the ETIAS initiative. But what you’re saying makes perfect sense now. I’m only talking about the visa. My apologies.
Usually they claim some loophole like you don’t need it to hitchhike/drive, just to board a commercial plane/ship/bus in.
Those flying in a private jet need not worry about such issues.
If it is just a tit for tat, that just makes everyone worse off. The supposed stated aims (security) seem suspect between 2 blocs that really should be able to work together.
They will of course allow anyone to access the system. And often they don't charge because they don't want to deal with the paperwork. But they're even more often officially supposed to charge.
My (American) father once needed emergency healthcare in France. He eventually received a bill from the French government in the mail back in the US. It was way cheaper than in the US, certainly, but it was not a zero balance due either. (And yes he paid.)
I went with the next best option: Ignore it, but it was more of a "warning ticket" that they could investigate further and issue a real ticket if I didn't pay.
Unsurprisingly, the one that provides cover in the US is significantly more expensive.
Schengen areas are still true freedom of movement.
I am an American citizen and think all electronic visas are a silly pain in the ass, but are better than traditional visas which require mailing your passport somewhere.
The world should strive for true freedom of movement for all people. Show up in person, walk through customs like everyone else regardless of passport.
ETIAS is therefore a regression from the norm. But, Vietnam used to be paper visa only, and now is E-visa. So that one is progress.
Having it as an intermediate step is great, though.
The barriers between the EU and other countries already exist, just to a different degree. There are certain benefits of ETIAS, especially concerning the security and illegal migration, as explained by a video linked in a neighbouring post. US is already imposing ESTA on EU citizens: why should EU give in and not apply the reciprocal measures?
Security and illegal migration seem dubious reasons to introduce (not) visas for the US. Is there a problem with illegal immigrants from the US? Terrorists?
So then we're just left with tit for tat politics. I for one would like my politicians to be more mature (ha!). This is how trade wars, and worse start. I personally would like to lead by example, be the better man, and be a good neighbour. If others don't wish to, that's their problem.
True free movement would then be reciprocal, i.e. EU-US travel would not require either ESTA or ETIAS. Basically that would mean US would be part of Schengen Area or a new similar structure.
The discord about US requiring visas from 5 EU countries is a separate issue that might bring other actual "tit for tat" measures if not resolved.
As an EU citizen you won't have any restrictions, but the rest of the world, including the UK, will have to get these e-visas.
The other part only pertains to the USA, where they make certain EU members get a visa and the EU is arguing that the EU should as a whole treat the USA in the same manner, give them visas.
So I don't believe this stated they would put up extra barriers between EU nations, only external nations.
Introducing this nonsense in the EU means that it will be really hard for either side to drop it, since realistically both sides would have to negotiate to drop it together. That's harder than for the US to drop it now, unilaterally.
In theory, yes. In practice, no. The US had no incentive to drop it, so they wouldn't do it (they could have done it a long time ago if they wanted). Now, they have an incentive to think about it and talk to the EU about a treaty which drops it for both sides.
I challenge them to do the Canadian thing and make it 5 years.
Instead of putting your fingers in your ears and yelling “We are EU, you must treat us all the same” there could be some acknowledgement that travelers from those countries are disproportionately overstayers and there is a justifiable reason to need to more closely track them.
If US travelers are overstaying in any particular EU countries, I would expect and appreciate the same measures would be put in place.
Policy should be set based on the reality on the ground and not merely policital fantasy.
If those countries citizens are not in fact disproportionate over-stayers than the US should change their policy and apologize.
EDIT: This short brief [1] seems to imply there’s room for improvement on the US side. I don’t quite understand why the subjective visa refusal rate is so high for some of these countries when the overstay rate is so low. Unless you argue that the refusals are preventing the overstays, but that is very much unproven.
[1] - https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2018-01/IB4812....
The EU wants it's citenzens treated the same, the way you phrased it already accepts that it's the case for the US. The equivalent would be more:
"If travelers from any state of the US are overstaying in the EU, I would expect travelers from that US State to need a visa."
Would you still appreciate that? (This is a genuine question not hyperbole.)
Doesn't matter, it's 90 days applied to the entire Schengen area, regardless of which member state(s) you visited.
E.g. your time in Monaco, Andorra or Ireland.
Dunno if your time in Ireland is kept track of or not if you fly to/from it.
You mean US citizens from particular states? Because that's what the equivalent would be.
Theres nothing stopping the US adding a state.
The same thing applies if belgium decides to conquer a few more miles of land. You can leave the EU, no state leaves the USA.
Whether a leaving EU party would remain part of a treaty would depend on whether it was individually named. The UK for example is having to negotiate all trade deals anew as current ones are EU only.
Also, no; the EU cannot send troops to the UK. Individual member states could do so, but not the EU. That may change in the future but at the moment it is how it is.
I don't understand the Ukraine reference; in context it seems like you are saying they tried to leave the EU and the EU sent in troops, but that didn't happen. Could you elaborate?
As I said there might be technical legal differences, but practically speaking at this level they can be ignored. If Texas wants independence, it isn't going to be put off by US laws. The US will loudly point to those laws yes, but whether it does anything will be independent of those laws.
And yet their separate sovereignty, allegedly restricted to “domestic” affairs, is why the US, through it's court system, allows US states to ignore US international commitments (notably, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations) in their execution of their criminal law.
So actually, if they had separate sovereignty, the states would have to sign the treaties themselves and would potentially be more bound to them, not less.
Part of the purpose of the EU is to present a united front when dealing with other countries. Collective bargaining doesn't work if you don't act collectively.
>If US travelers are overstaying in any particular EU countries.
The only way to do this would be to require Visas to the whole EU because of the lack of internal border controls (for most of the EU).
If you're from a big country like France or Germany, you don't notice, but if you're from a smaller country like Portugal this means when you realise your country does not even have consular facilities in the random place you're visiting, you don't worry, the French or Germans do and you're an EU citizen, so they'll sub for your own consular officials as needed.
Free travel is not the feature that is legally indicative of a nation.
[1] Yes, I know that EU consulates can be shared by other EU citizens. Nonetheless, legally there is no such thing as "an EU consulate" or "an ambassador from the EU" or a generic EU passport. It really is a radically different model from the EU. (The most notable difference is that countries can unilaterally withdraw from the EU without triggering a civil war within the EU. States can't.)
Every single EU member state is a sovereign nation with its own foreign policy, military, standing to sign treaties, seat in the UN General Assembly, international recognition beyond the UN, and a couple of them even have permanent seats in the Security Council. And most, but not all are parties to the Schengan Area, and most, but not all, are members of NATO. The ones that are not landlocked even get to set their own maritime boundaries, whereas past a certain point in the US, the maritime boundaries here are Federal territory. EU member states still maintain formal diplomatic relations among themselves and with other nations, and issue passports and visas. They might have standardized their passports, sure, but they are still issued by the member states.
Hawaii has none of that, it is a US State. Once you’re a US State, you don’t stop being one, ever, and we fought a civil war over this. That clearly isn’t the case with the EU, as demonstrated by Brexit.
In short, the analogy doesn’t work because it isn’t analogous. The EU wants to be treated like the US in some cases and like separate nations in other cases. The US is just the US as far as other nations have to be concerned, and there isn’t a Hawaiian or Californian or Texan passport that other nations can granularly accept or reject, just American ones.
If you want something more analogous to the Japanese hypothetically rejecting Hawaiians, it would be like the US allowing Visa-free entry from all of Germany except people from Brandenburg, or all of Australia except people from Victoria, or all of Japan except people from Okinawa. As far as the 4 EU States without Visa-free access to the US are concerned, they have normal diplomatic channels available to them.
EDIT: Edited for grammar and clarity. Sorry about that, quite a few interruptions in the last few minutes.
If you find that difficult, just rephrase "the EU has" into "the EU member states have". So: the EU member states have decided on collective visa measures.
Collective response is something states do. See NATO Article 5.
It isn’t a mere organizing principle, there is a legal distinction that is easily drawn with differing legal trappings.
The EU deciding on collective Visa measures is fine, I actually have not taken any issue with that in this entire thread, the only thing I took issue with was a bad analogy which left alone, only confuses and misleads otherwise constructive discussion.
Long and the short of it is: Hawaii and Croatia aren’t analogous to each other vis a vis visa agreements, and that’s because they come from differing International legal positions, a position in which Hawaii is actually irrelevant from beginning to end and Croatia isn’t but has the legal standing and recognition to temporarily be irrelevant in its own visa policies if it chooses to. The nuances are not unimportant.
Case in point: I have an EU driver's license. It is valid in the EU. When in the US, driver's licenses are per-state, though I am allowed to drive in a different state for a while, I have to get the current state's license when I move my residence. California has border checks for agricultural goods. etc. etc.
Nations have agreed to fairly consistent diplomatic protocols and channels with which to treat each other. Hawaii can’t issue visas, but Japan can require Americans to apply for a visa. That isn’t just a stretch of the Commerce Clause, it is part of how and why the US Constitution was written the way it was: so individual States weren’t forming international interests contrary to the national interest.
There is no reasonable way Japan could refuse entry to a US citizens who are suspected of residing in a state without effectively denying all US citizens because there is only one type of US citizen. (Which they are free to do, but obviously won’t.)
On the other hand residents of the EU have it in the reverse. There are 28 (?) different types of citizens, each with different passports, each from countries with different immigration departments, different foreign affairs ministers, etc.
It’s asking a lot for other countries to just blanket accept all of these types of citizens from very different countries, and more to just accept them from any new country that may be added. Turkey is a dictatorship and came damn close to being in the EU. It’s entirely feasible some member country like Hungry (to pick on one) begins to behave badly or becomes a dictatorship or starts persecuting people and the expectation is still we must accept their passports the same as a French one? Absurd. Of course not. The EU is a long way from being a single country.
Yes because the US has decided they should be, the EU has decided they want their citizens treating the same also.
I understand your point that you can't differentiate Americans by passport, unlike Europeans, but that's a subtly different argument.
"Turkey is a dictatorship and came damn close to being in the EU" If by damn close you mean informal talks. Theres a list of things nations need to sign up to, be become EU members. Not being a dictatorship is probably in there somewhere.
> The EU is a very complicated collection of many individual countries that all have their own citizens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_of_the_European_Un...
As a German, I'm a citizen of Germany and a citizen of the EU.
> Free movement in the EU doesn’t even extend to all member countries
Sure it does. It does even extend to a few countries outside the EU.
> different types of citizens
They are all EU citizens. All of them have the right of free movement within the EU. Many of them are also in the Schengen area (which has 400 Million people), which got rid of internal border controls and which has a common Visa policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_the_Schengen_Ar...
> Turkey is a dictatorship and came damn close to being in the EU.
It never came close to being in the EU. There have been talks since 2005 with not much progress. Turkey would need to fully comply with EU laws and regulations. That's a process which could need another decade. Then the EU countries would need to vote in favor. Every single one of them. That's not clear how that would be achievable. If Turkey would be a dictatorship, then there would be zero chance of Turkey becoming a member of the EU.
> Hungry
Hungary?
There is absolutely nothing that would prevent Japan or the EU to impose additional differentiating factors to US citizens is deciding entry to their country.
“For safety reason, we require all visitors to have a valid driving license. We only recognize licenses from those states that have less than x driving related deaths per 100,000.”
Absurd from a policy point of view? Of course. Impossible from a legal point of view? Absolutely not.
Mind that there is also this point: The individual EU-Schengen country doesn't give out visa for their own country. U.S. citizens can only get a Schengen Visa. Thus if the U.S. says "EU Member X requires Visa" country X can't enforce Visa itself the only way X can enforce Visa is by the EU enforcing Visa.
Also the EU is a solidarity agreement - EU member states pledged to stand in for each other at such situations. If EU doesn't uphold it's not fulfilling the promise it gave those countries, when they gave up some souvereignity.
If the EU does build a database of US citizens’ lineage and then starts denying US citizens of Croatian descent entry not only would that be hugely ironic it would also cause a pretty emphatic response from the US.
There is only one US country and only one US citizen.
The argument people are making comparing EU countries to US states is absurd.
They might as well be saying “Well what if the EU decided not to allow visa free entry to New Zealand citizens from the city of Auckland. Huzzah! Therefore US should treat all EU countries the same!”
See how absurd that is? Because a US state has just as much control over immigration and foreign policy or national defense etc etc as does a New Zealand city, which is to say none.
Many European countries automatically make people their citizens by lineage, not place of birth. Sometimes with little restriction by the paternal line.
Being born in the US to Croatian parents will make you a citizen of both countries, no application required.
Croatia may not know about it, but you'll still be doing something illegal if such a person applies for an ETIAS and answers "No" to the question about being an EU citizen (which will make you ineligible for an ETIAS).
It would be even messier for them if they were born in Croatia and then immigrated to the US as a child.
That's how the US and Canadian implementations work.
Automatically?
Source?
Croatia: http://eudo-citizenship.eu/NationalDB/docs/CRO%20Law%20on%20...
Section 4: "A child acquires Croatian citizenship by origin: [various criteria about who your parents are]" There's no "may" or "can".
Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationality_law#Descent...
"A person born of a parent with German citizenship at the time of the child's birth is a German citizen. Place of birth is not a factor in citizenship determination based on parentage."
Italy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_nationality_law#Attrib...
"Italian citizenship is granted by birth through the paternal line, with no limit on the number of generations, or through the maternal line for individuals born after 1 January 1948."
France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_nationality_law#French_...
"French citizenship by birth abroad to at least one French citizen The child (legitimate or natural) is French if at least one parent is French."
Some countries (like France) require the birth to be registered, while others do not.
> - There is a separate dispute between EU and US, because US imposes visas on five EU states (Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, Romania and Cyprus). According the EU law, all EU countries should be treated equally or otherwise reciprocal measures should apply. There have been calls within the EU to respond tit for tat and impose EU visas on US citizens, if the issue does not get resolved soon.
So in the dispute above that is being hotly debated, Croatians (for example) want the EU to enforce visa free entry to the US as reciprocation for the visa free entry to the EU. But according to what you say, now US citizens who happen to be of Croatian descent don't have visa free entry to the EU and must get a Croatian passport.
But if it's the machine that's deciding these things based on the letter of the law, you might have a problem.
Maybe ETIAS will have a bigger carve-out for these situations than the US and Canada (which exempt eachothers' citizens). Or maybe they won't.
Wouldn't that be an unreliable test, since you could've renounced your citizenship or have been born to Canadian parents visiting Italy, since Italy is jus sanguinis [1]?
Now you may have to state Yes/No to a question about other citizenships, when the best answer for a lot of Americans (a nation of immigrants) will be “Don’t know for sure, maybe”.
As a point of order, US states do have citizens. As a US citizen, I'm also a citizen of the state in which I reside.
That you can move to another state and claim residency there implies what residency is, transient, whereas citizenship is permanent.
Also, the fourteenth amendment says "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
My dictionary [3] has many definitions for citizen, none of which are very specific about being ascribed to a country, although the example does use a country:
> 1 : an inhabitant of a city or town especially : one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman
> 2a : a member of a state
> b : a native or naturalized person who owes allegiance to a government and is entitled to protection from it
> // She was an American citizen but lived most of her life abroad.
> 3 : a civilian as distinguished from a specialized servant of the state
> // Soldiers were sent to protect the citizens.
[1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/visa-and-immigratio...
[2] http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2009/10/02/why-is-china-issui...
The term state in that context means country, which is why citizen is a synonym for national. in the Oxford English Dictionary, that is the first definition, and secondarily (and more historically than anything) it refers to citizens of a town. It might be in use locally, but I have never heard anyone use the term citizen in that way other than poetically, and I have spent time in a number of English speaking regions.
That used to be the case for Poland. After the fall of communism it was extremely popular to travel to the US on a tourist visa and stay - the much higher pay and standard of living were generally worth the risk. But nowadays? In 2019? Why the fuck would anyone from Poland do that is beyond me. The pay is hardly any better if at all, plus you risk getting absolutely fucked over if you have to go to a hospital, not to mention that you could be deported at any time. It just makes no sense considering you can hop on a cheap ryanair flight to anywhere else in Europe and get paid much better, have access to guaranteed healthcare, paid holiday/sick leave and all the other rights that we enjoy as EU citizens. US seems to be living in this bubble from 20 years ago where Polish citizens used to overstay their tourist visas massively - but times have changed, and the visa requirements haven't.
- Tit-for-tat response is a geopolitical reality. Regardless whether you think it is pre-school model or not, this is what pretty much all countries do, as it is a perfectly rational way (and sometimes even the only way) to defend your interests. By rational I am talking about the Game Theory kind of rational. :)
- You suggest to look at each EU country individually (just also keep in mind that there are no border controls beetween the EU countries in the Schengen Zone). In such case, should we also look at each US state individually (because they are also not uniform, e.g. some are much poorer than the others)? EU as a whole has much greater weight and leverage. The point I am making here is that it is another geopolitical reality: countries use their weight and, for example, US uses its weight to exert its influence pretty much all over the world. Well, so does the EU in this case, whether the US likes it or not.
- Your point about the citizens of those countries being disproportionate overstayers is not true. As a matter of fact, the overstay rate of these countries is lower than some of those which are already in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), e.g. compare those fives countries with Spain, Greece, Hungary, etc. So, if there is some kind of threshold they cross, then it should apply to the current VWP countries to, shouldn't it? Please the see offical US Homeland Security report as a reference here:
https://www.dhs.gov/publication/fiscal-year-2017-entryexit-o...
Though not too different from imposing trade sanction on those products that hit some states much harder than others.
It's also an evolutionarily stable strategy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
> Strategy for the iterated prisoner's dilemma
...
> The winning deterministic strategy was tit for tat, which Anatol Rapoport developed and entered into the tournament. It was the simplest of any program entered, containing only four lines of BASIC, and won the contest. The strategy is simply to cooperate on the first iteration of the game; after that, the player does what his or her opponent did on the previous move. Depending on the situation, a slightly better strategy can be "tit for tat with forgiveness". When the opponent defects, on the next move, the player sometimes cooperates anyway, with a small probability (around 1–5%). This allows for occasional recovery from getting trapped in a cycle of defections. The exact probability depends on the line-up of opponents.
Thanks for sharing! Probably the best explanation of classic game theory that I have seen.
Stones in glass houses ?
Territorial restrictions The vehicle selection can restrict travel to certain countries. For a description of these restrictions on admission, the countries are divided into three zones.
Zone 1: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and Vatican
Zone 2: Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia
Zone 3: All countries which are not in zone 1 or 2.
Jaguar, Maserati, Land Rover and Porsche cars as well as all luxury cars may enter only in Zone 1 countries. Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen cars up to group L are allowed to enter only in Zone 1 countries as well as Poland and the Czech Republic, while X* cars are only allowed to enter in Zone 1 countries. Vehicles of all other brands may enter only in the zones 1 and 2.
Trucks, vans, people carriers and minibuses of all brands may only be driven in zones 1 and 2.
Entry into any country in zone 3 is not permitted.
In case of offence against cross border and territorial restrictions all insurances lose their validity.
No flip flopping
The car rental places dont want you to take their nice cars to countries that have a higher rate of car theft.
Pretending all of the EU is equal is silly.
It's not the same. When you are born in California, your citizenship is "US". When you are born in Bulgaria, your citizenship is Bulgarian, not European. If that happens, of course it'll be more difficult to prevent people from a single country to move freely.
This is one of the biggest differences between United States and EU. USA is one country, Europe is not.
> US uses its weight to exert its influence pretty much all over the world. Well, so does the EU in this case, whether the US likes it or not.
I am European, however this comment makes me laugh. USA can literally crash EU in a couple of weeks, if they want to. It doesn't mean I need to live with fear, for God's sake, but just saying.
This answer from the EU is just a show off, utterly useless, and obviously being two months before the elections it tells me something - we want to protect our borders from the USA? Finally we won't have anymore terrorists coming from USA. Thanks EU, I feel safer now. :)
Not exactly. As already explained in some posts below, the EU has a legal concept of "EU citizenship". So, from the legal point of view, Bulgarians in your example are both the Bulgarian citizens and EU citizens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_of_the_European_Un...
> This is one of the biggest differences between United States and EU. USA is one country, Europe is not.
Sure, but how relevant is that? At least in this case, I think the difference is more of a technicality.
By the way, EU is already more than a confederation, since it actually has many properties of federation (for example, if you will compare the political systems of EU and Switzerland, you will actually find quite a few key similarities). Although European politicians do everything they can to avoid these words. So, while EU is certainly not a country, it made quite a lot of steps towards becoming one. It's just a fact, regardless whether you are pro-federation or anti-federation.
> I am European, however this comment makes me laugh. USA can literally crash EU in a couple of weeks, if they want to.
.. inflicting huge damage to itself with very major repercussions to the US national security. This world is really not as simple as that. Is US much more powerful than the EU? Yeah, sure. Although even in terms of raw power it's not as dramatic (economy: EU is already of very similar weight as US in terms of GDP; military: combined EU forces would be very comfortably the second largest military in the world, both in terms of quality and quantity). Anyway, this is rather theorethic. There are many more complex aspects which matter in reality with a very subtle palance of powers, so "they can crash us" doesn't mean much.
> This answer from the EU is just a show off, utterly useless, and obviously being two months before the elections it tells me something - we want to protect our borders from the USA? Finally we won't have anymore terrorists coming from USA. Thanks EU, I feel safer now. :)
This was actually planned and made public years ago, at least as far as 2016, so nothing to do with the elections. As pointed out by others, it is not targeted explictly at the US. It's something what's going to be applicable for many other countries.
That's maybe what the US believes (or some of the "America is special" hardliners) and if you believe it too I would say their propaganda did a good job. They can neither militarily nor economically do this, even if they wish they could.
Says who?
You don't need to crash a country just by throwing bombs at them. Just look at how dysfunctional the EU is.
With VWP there is hardly any filtering of potential overstays so the rates might be higher than those through the visa process.
US states have no foreign relations. There's no Californian embassy in Sofia, but there is a Bulgarian embassy in Washington. No American travels on a Californian passport, but Bulgarians travel on Bulgarian passports.
If you want foreign countries to treat the EU as a single diplomatic unit, then all the EU member-state embassies should probably be closed and replaced with EU embassies, and all member-state passports should be replaced with generic EU passports.
As a practical matter, no country could subject citizens of different EU member states to different visa policies if they all had identical passports. That's exactly the situation with American passports.
Yep. And then you get disagreements and tit-for-tat. Just don't claim that the US's policies are in some way more legitimate.
> then it should stop holding
Says who? On whose authority? If the US wants its citizens to be treated uniformly, then it shouldn't give out per-state driver's licenses.
The authority or reasonableness and practicality.
> If the US wants its citizens to be treated uniformly, then it shouldn't give out per-state driver's licenses.
It may be news to you, but those aren't travel documents and are nonstandardized to boot. But if you think the EU should wade into that mess, I guess you're entitled to your opinion.
Also, it's probably worth noting treating Americans as citizens of their state and not the US for immigration purposes is totally unprecedented in the modern era of passports. On the other hand, the precedent over the same period has been to treat Europeans as citizens of their member states and not of an undifferentiated EU.
So does the European Union.
It's fairly close to how it works. If you live in Montenegro and need any EU visa, you go to Slovenian embassy. Even if you'll visit Spain or Ireland.
Also, it is perfectly fair because USA is dealing with entire EU here and hence can not treat Poland or Cyprus any differently than France or Germany because the stakes are exactly the same.
A more sensible policy should have been to publish the overstay rates every year and use that to determine VWP for the next fiscal year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_itera...
[1]Never forgive, never forget
Both practical experience and game theory show it's a reasonably good approach in quite a lot of situations beyond preschool, and a lot more effective than the kind of abject surrender you propose in promoting desired behavioral changes in other parties.
Maybe a better analogy would be if the EU said people from New York State disproportionately overstay and will need a visa.
And it is more like the super-rational tit for two tats strategy anyway. The US is _appallingly_ bad at meeting its international obligations, it routinely signs treaties with other countries only to subsequently decide it doesn't fancy sticking to its side of the bargain but of course it demands they fulfil their end...
All countries (including the US) agreed to the Vienna Convention, which says to let the other country know if its citizen gets arrested or hospitalised and requests consular assistance by their people.
The US completely ignored this, routinely holding foreigners without an interpreter on the rationale that hey, they aren't _citizens_ so they don't have rights... And hey, how we were supposed to know that he was saying he wants consular assistance, he said he wanted to talk to his family, and we said "No" but we never refused consular assistance...
The US Supreme Court decided that if US police do this it's just fine. No civil rights violation. Sure, the foreigner had "rights", but if police prevent them exercising those rights? Eh, whatever, they are American police, and Americans come first... "My country, right or wrong, my country" yeah?
So lots of countries that the US is supposedly friends with signed an additional treaty with the US which basically says OK, fine, even if our citizen doesn't make it clear that they need consular assistance, tell us immediately anyway.
Are you guessing that the US complied and now it's fine? Of course not. Now the US routinely says that it tried to contact consular services but alas other operational priorities meant it took a few days to get around to it...
[ Back when it was her job, Hilary Clinton struggled to get ordinary Americans who ultimately are responsible for implementing these rules to understand Tit for Tat. You beat up the "weird foreign guy acting strange" and lock him in a jail cell for a week "to teach him a lesson". Now how are the US consular team supposed to persuade a Parisian genndarme to let some American idiot get on a plane home instead of leaving him to rot for starting a drunken fight in a restaurant? ]
Your country treats other countries badly. Under the circumstances I think they've been exceedingly nice about it and I think it's more than time the EU threw the book at the US.
I fail to understand what you mean here; aren't these two things the same? The way I see it, politics is exactly the practice of coming up with fantasies that larger groups are willing to accept as reality.
Now consider overstay numbers (total overstay vs % of total travelers from that country): Canada - 120K (.11%) Mexico - 47K (1.73%)
UK - 25K (0.39%) India - 17K (1.32%) Italy - 16K (0.83%)
Bulgaria - 300 (1.3%) Cyprus - 61 (0.69%) Poland - 2400 (1.3%) Romania - 1300 (1.4%)
Entire Europe - 126K Entire Asia - 56K
None of those numbers are significantly different, in fact when people know that they can reenter easily the high chances are they leave more easily. It is a bit like those H1B try to hang to their jobs but those on green card travel all around the world and quit all the time too.
It feels like major hypocrisy to ask the US to treat nationals from those countries equally when the EU itself does not.
Also any specific worker rights we don’t enjoy in the EU? I’m a Romanian so am interested in details.
The issue is that the United States has agreements with the EU and, much like when Trump tried to negotiate a trade deal with Germany[3], those deals supercede any deals that may have existed with member states in the past.
This scenario, when reversed, would be akin to the EU having a deal with the United States but excluding Texas and requiring all Texans to officially apply for and receiving a visa before travel. Even though they're Americans and the deal with America should supercede, they would be - willfully - ignoring it.
[0] - https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/croatia-ready-meet-sch...
[1] - https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/romania-bulgaria-quali...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-croatia-eu-schengen/croat...
[3] - https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-merkel-germany-e...
The EU countries not part of Schengen Area still enjoy the same rights to freedom of movement, but there might be passport control. And this doesn't really matter anyway, since those countries are on the way to join Schengen Area within the next few years..
The visa issue is between the European Union and the United State, not the Shengen Area and the United States.
It is like if European Union would require a Visa for inhabitants of Texas, Florida and Washington, even if a visa-free deal with the United States was agreed.
I do not think it is hyprocritial to require new EU member states to go through certain transition period. A bunch of other European countries went through that process too. At different speeds, but they made it. We are talking about contries; it's not the same as joining your local tennis club, it's a longer and more complex process. If there is anything to blame, then perhaps its your own government which is lagging behind on the necessary reforms. And meanwhile, EU is trying to make it easier for you to travel to the US. So, what are you complaining about?
Even though those four EU countries are not in the Schengen Area, their citizens can freely travel (without visa or any authorisation) anywhere in the EU. They just go through the border control. In other words, the requirements concerning the free travel are already met. Now, in the context of EU-US travel, do other (internal EU) requirements matter? I would argue that they don't.
EU directives are domestic legal acts. I guess you can think of them as US federal laws. Let me put it this way: let's say, just hypothetically, US would have some federal law regulating the movement (perhaps imposing some barriers) between the US states. Why and how exactly would this be relevant to the US-EU visa/travel agreements? What matters is that 27 countries agree to negotiate together, so the European Commission negotiates with the US on behalf of the EU, including those five countries. For the purpose of the agreement, it does not matter what legal instrument (EU directive, 27 bilateral treaties, whatever) is used to implement that agreement.
If the eu wants to deal with internal eu travel and residence outside of the schengen agreement that is one thing, but it's not a consistent policy to try to create a second set of international relations by selectively bypassing the schengen agreement. A second set of agreements would be both coherent and acceptable if the eu accepted that the schengen agreement was superfluous and not to be taken into account for countries that opted to enter into a reciprocal relationship with them based on this new agreement. Otherwise it is just picking and choosing without sufficient respect to the other parties involved. This would probably be for the best long term, since the schengen leaves eu international policy too tied to a few non-eu members who have schengen agreements in place.
In brief, it is the eu's problem that they have an imperfect union and have not managed to integrate all their members into all their reciprocal agreements. It is an understandable problem, but not one they can credibly complain to others about.
Edit: I think where we are missing each other is I don't view the schengen agreement as just internal policies, but the framework for the eu's interaction with the world. From what I have read in the eu's own words and elsewhere, that is its intention.
It's not hypocritical to ask that passports from that country be treated the same as passports from any other EU country.
An argument could be made for the US to put tighter restrictions on planes coming from those countries. But every EU citizen on the same plane should get the same treatment.
It's a border security issue that should only apply to locations.
Citizenship is a different thing and I don't see how it's related to this discussion.
The United States really is one country, and is Constitutionally required to maintain unity, to have only one front for international affairs, and to allow U.S. citizens to be citizens of the state in which they reside.
None of these is true in the EU. EU member states are permitted to leave. Each EU member state carries on its own foreign relations. Each EU citizen maintains citizenship in the EU member state of his or her birth.
The EU is not at all analogous to the United States after the Constitution of 1798 and post-Texas v. White. There might be an argument that it's similar to the United States under the Articles of Confederation. Any insistance that they are more similar is a false equivalency. That is the point of GP.
In the interest of promoting honest discourse, please do not truncate people's statements. If a Californian "fully" moves to Texas, i.e., establishes domicile there, then they become a citizen of Texas. That is a key difference.
As a country, you can move almost anywhere in the US and have full citizenship rights. (Note that Puerto Rico, American Samoa, etc are not part of the US, and you don't get automatic rights when you move there. American Somoans are not even US citizens by birth, for example, because it's not part of the US. Palmyra Atoll and DC are the only part of the US not part of a state, and residents are not citizens of a state and don't have full US citizenship rights.)
What problems does the US have with travelers from Croatia or Cyprus? Explain it and maybe they can fix it and we can move on.
If there is an underlying issue of overstaying when people come from some EU countries where there is an economic incentive to go to the US, then one can understand that the US will respond by imposing visa requirements to ameliorate that.
Therefore if overstaying is not a concern when going from the US to the EU then imposing the same requirement in reverse is more of an emotional concern, which might be the right choice if ones goal is to have the EU act as a whole emotionally.
If by "Ironically" you mean "Therefore".
Require everyone from Texas to obtain a Visa. Maybe then the message will sink in
https://etias.com/about-etias/who-needs-etias
It even includes the island of Palau and their population of 20,000 people:
https://etias.com/about-etias/etias-for-palauan-citizens
This has nothing to do specifically with the US.
"The United States has been in a dispute with the EU's European Parliament and European Commission over visas for Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, Romania and Cyprus. Travelers in those five countries are the only EU nations that the US requires to apply for a visa."
There is no obligation for countries to always get bigger, or for countries to pretend there's no regional variations. ESTA is a pain and stupid and it gives me a worse impression of the USA every time I have to fill it out. There is no reason why the rest of the world should follow suit.
I see nobody else has said it yet, so I will - I hope that after Brexit the UK can drop this ETIAS nonsense and be more welcoming to Americans, even if they don't drop ESTA in response.
https://www.mae.ro/en/node/2040 https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-tra...
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-tra...
A hat and a helmet both protect your head, but you wouldn't call them by the same name.
>A visa (from the Latin charta visa, meaning "paper that has been seen")[1] is a conditional authorization granted by a country to a foreigner, allowing them to enter, remain within, or to leave that country.
Why does it matter to you if it goes into the passport or not? If I recall correctly my F1 Visa for the US didn't go into my passport either, but was a separate document.
ESTA roughly as annoying as booking a plane ticket if you don't already have an account with a pre-filled profile, and usually granted instantly.
A visa request, even if done online, can easily cost you many hours filling out forms, scanning documents, etc., and often takes weeks to process.
It's also much rarer for an ESTA to be denied than for a visa to be denied.
There's a reason why passportindex.org distinguishes mostly between "real" visa requirements, and mostly pro-forma stuff like ESTA, visa-on-arrival etc.
They're all visas.
Some other countries don’t have advance electronic approval, but do distinguish between visa-on-arrival and visa-free transit, and it would be advisable to follow each country’s terminology. Australia does refer to its ETA and eVisitor programs as a “visa” in official literature.
Otherwise you could end up confused and say the wrong thing. For example if you arrive at the border and the officer asks “Do you have a visa?” and you answer “Yes” but only have a travel authorization, you have suddenly made a false statement and could be in trouble.
(There are a few ferries between British Columbia and Washington state that are also treated as a land border.)
For me, arriving at the US by land was by far a worse experience than arriving by air, as my passport was taken until they had time to process me, waiting in a room i was not allowed to leave, then filling out an additional form and paying additionally. Contrasted to arriving by air "do you have esta? -> yes -> have fun" at the immigration.
Except when it doesn't. If your visa waiver is refused then you have to visit the US embassy to get a "traditional" visa, and sometimes that's not even possible to get.
Canada does not require any visa for Americans tourists. All I need to do is bring a passport (or passport card if driving in)
Lots of dual citizens.
If Canada required Canadian passports from dual US/Canada nationals, an American in that situation could lose their security clearance.
(Usually the US is okay with being a dual citizen if you haven’t taken advantage of it in any way).
Then when they tried to get an authorization, they got rejected and told their EU passport is worthless and to get a Canadian/US one).
It’s a lot messier for the EU because of jus sanguine. Toooons of EU citizens that haven’t/won’t bother to get the passport.
I guess I’ll have to do it and waste the embassy’s time in a language I know 20 words of.
- The title of the article is "US citizens will need to register to visit parts of Europe starting in 2021"
- The article includes the quote "The [US State Department] official added that the "ETIAS authorization is not a visa.""
Where did the "visa" in the HN title come from?
And why is that?
We have so much to learn from each other! In fact I wish we could make it mandatory for everyone to have to live a year in a foreign country. It would make the world a much better place.
And visas aren’t even really a hindrance for Americans going to Europe or most countries. They’ll be stamped off pretty much guaranteed, unless you’ve got major criminal convictions or reason to be suspicious (like planning a 6 month vacation with <$1000 in the bank). The real problem is paying for flight tickets, hotels, and actually getting vacation time.
I get where you're coming from and agree that would be great for America but I really don't want mass migration of Americans to Europe. The number we have is enough. The culture is poisonous and already destroying America (see homelessness, healthcare, government shutdowns, racial conflicts, political divisions), we don't need it spreading here any more than it already is.
If Americans showed any inclination of integrating this might be a different story but I'm surrounded by expats who despite residing in European countries for years haven't learned the language, put their kids in English-speaking schools and otherwise gone about their American lifestyles in European countries without any apparent consideration for the locals (and often go on to complain about how "unwelcoming" the countries they live in are).
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Americans, I don't think they're horrible people and the country certainly has huge achievements. However, the idea of mass (albeit temporary) migration to/from Europe to give "different perspectives" terrifies me, as it feels like it'll largely be in a single direction, at least when it comes to culture.
It's honestly really hard for me to wrap my head around this, since hardly anything is more interesting to me than learning about other cultures, their different norms etc. It not only opens your eyes to how some things could be better but you also gain a fresh perspective on your own culture and yourself.
1) massive number of scam sites charging tons of money to submit your application (hopefully)
2) doesn’t crash on the first day
3) doesn’t exempt rich people that come by private plane (unlikely)
4) still allows EU nationals to get into EU with the Canadian or American passports. I’m technically an EU citizen by lineage, but havent bothered to get that passport since I don’t even speak the language.
It will probably still have to loophole if flying into a non-EU country and then driving in.
I think what would run afoul is if you're doing journalism, photography, or something where you're doing the work in th EU, versus firing up a corporate VPN and writing code on a US server for a US company.
(Keep in mind you can do things like go to meetings or attend conferences w/o a special visa in the EU and Canada currently)
I suspect in the long term "digital nomad" visas will become a thing. After all, if someone wants to work in say, Tokyo or Talinn for 2 years in their early 20s, and is willing to pay Japanese or Estonian taxes, that could be a win win. You get someone in a high tax bracket bringing money in, and presumably buying other things (eating out, rent etc).
They were ineligible for the Canadian ETIAS.
But if they lost their permits while overseas, it could take weeks for a new permit, meanwhile a Canadian passport holder could get a new one in 24hrs.
The EU is introducing a system equivalent to the US's ESTA. (Most) EU citizens may travel visa-free to the US but must register (and pay) on ESTA.
It will be the same for US citizens to travel to the EU.
ESTA specifically allows people to travel visa-free.
Hindering access to the EU may be a minor nuisance on the surface. But its a harbinger of worse things to come and undermines the unprecedented peace and stability we've seen in the world in the last 75 years.
The US have had the 20th century, that great for them but it's high time for Europe to recover.
Peanuts in comparison to the jackpot that WWII was for the US, and it cemented their influence.
This setup allows for 3-years multi-entry. That's insane! Well done, EU.
* US requires visas for travellers from 5 EU countries, only ESTA for others. EU requires equal treatment of member nations. This is the point of the EU-USA discord
* ETIAS is an electronic travel authorisation system similar to the ESTA, and applies to all travelers to the EU from visa-free countries. Practically ESTA and ETIAS are both e-visas. This applies to all countries, not just the US.
https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/etias/
> You can enter the Schengen member states for as many times as you want, for as long as your ETIAS is valid, and you have not stayed more than 90 days in a 180 days period.
> if I’m understanding this correctly, it’ll make things easier for nomads