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Comment by zamfi | Hacker News Reader

As an EU citizen who wants for “EU countries should be treated equally”, you might want to start at home — Schengen doesn’t include (some of) the countries you listed and citizens of (some of) those countries don’t have the same work rights across the EU itself already.

It feels like major hypocrisy to ask the US to treat nationals from those countries equally when the EU itself does not.

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Poland is in the Schengen Area. Cyprus is divided since Turkish invasion, so it is somewhat a special case. Other countries joined the EU relatively recently. However, all four countries are legally obliged to join the Schengen Area, they just have to fulfil certain requirements. Without going into all details.. don't you think it kind of makes sense? If you want to join an area without border controls, then for example you should first harmonise the rules on how you secure the external border, immigration control, customs control, etc. It is not as simple as you think.

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?

But doesn't it seem hypocritical to push for equal treatment externally when those requirements have not been met? EU processes like this one can take decades to iron out.

It might be a valid point to some extent, but there is an imporant aspect here: we are talking about _different_ requirements.

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.

It's not an irrelevant treaty. It is specifically the part of the EU agreement which regulates visas and travel in respect to non-EU countries (yes, I understand others have been allowed into it by reciprocal agreement, nonetheless it an EU directive). If a country can't yet be part of it or refuses to be part of it, why should they be treated as if they were? Free travel within the EU is the part that appears to be internal and not relevant in this case.

I don't follow you. Which treaty are you referring to? Are you talking about the EU directive regarding the visa policy? If so, how is this relevant to the negotiations/decision-making concerning the EU-US agreements?

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.

What I was trying to say is: The schengen agreement or treaty, which is now a part of eu law, deals with visa policy for the eu. There is no reason for foreign actors to treat eu countries like they are in the schengen when they are not, since it is specifically designed to deal with eu-extra eu relations.

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 would be hypocritical to push for certain issues related to internal EU borders when they haven't met those requirements yet.

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.

Your counfounding European Union and Shengen area. Countries can be part of the Shengen Area without being in the European union (like Switzerland, Norway). Furthermore, Croatia, Cyprus and Bulgaria are in the process of joining the Shengen area.

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.

Afaik Poland is in Schengen and Polish citizens can travel/work freely in EU.

Schengen or not anyone can travel freely and work anywhere in EU as long as they are EU citizens. I have a Cypriot passport and I can walk into any EU country as if its Cyprus and get a job.

What are you even going on about? The Schengen is a separate system from the EU, which abolishes border control (passport control). That also necessitates common Visa Policy. The freedom of movement in the EU is the principal right to move between countries.

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..

Schengen isn’t EU. Part of it are 4 countries that are not in the EU and the 4 EU members that are not in Schengen are obliged to join it.

Also any specific worker rights we don’t enjoy in the EU? I’m a Romanian so am interested in details.

Despite the fact that the United States is not a Schengen participant, so that doesn't equate into their rationale for the visa process with those countries, the work that you say the EU should do (otherwise it's hypocrisy) is nigh complete[0,1,2].

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...

Regardless of whether Schengen applies free movement absolutely does.

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