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EU issues Canada visa warning

Canadians could need travel visas if policy is not changed

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
September 26th, 2007 issue

For about a year, in the late 1990s, Czechs could travel freely to Canada without going through the hassle or expense of applying for a tourist visa. But, when claims for asylum from Czech Roma started pouring in, Canada clamped down and tightened its border again.
Now, with the strength of Europe behind it, the Czech Republic might once again get visa-free travel rights to Canada.
On Sept. 17, the European Union issued a warning to Canada: Move toward visa-free travel for all EU citizens or else. Today, people from eight EU countries — the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia — have to apply for tourist visas to visit Canada.
The EU wants to see visa restrictions lifted for at least one of these eight countries by the end of the year “as a token of goodwill of the Canadians,” says Friso Roscam Abbing, spokesman for the EU Commission for Justice, Freedom and Security.
More than hurt feelings are at stake. Should Canada refuse to grant visa-free status to at least one more EU country by the year’s end, the EU is prepared to slap its own visa restrictions on Canada next year.
The report references “appropriate steps” that could be “considered against Canada,” but Roscam Abbing is more direct: “We would consider imposing reciprocal visa obligations on certain citizens,” namely diplomats. “This is the infamous symbolic first step,” he says.
These restrictions wouldn’t just restrict diplomats’ travels to the eight new member states; they would apply to all EU countries. Hypothetically, the restrictions could then be expanded to include all Canadian citizens.
“The visa policy is now a communitarized policy, it’s no longer with individual member states [to determine visa restrictions],” he says.
Jiří Beneš, a spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry, says the Czech Republic is “ready to act in line with the EU position and consider ‘appropriate steps.’ ”
But Roscam Abbing stresses that these measures are only hypothetical now. And, he says, they are pretty much the only ones at the EU’s disposal. “There are not many other measures that you can suggest,” he says.
One step at a time
Canada, meanwhile, says it is moving toward the goal of visa-free travel for all EU citizens but is signaling that it won’t be rushed into granting visa-free status for countries that don’t meet its criteria.
According to the EU report, Canadian officials are expected to visit four of the eight EU countries in November and the other four in February.
These experts will discuss the nine criteria countries must meet to qualify for visa exemption, says Mike Fraser of Canada’s Citizenship and Immigration Ministry.
In the end, “we hope to ensure that [these countries] have a clear understanding of why a visa exemption cannot be provided at this time and what changes would need to occur before a visa exemption could be considered,” Fraser says.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has indicated that Canada bases “its decisions on assessment of each country’s circumstances, and not on reciprocity,” the EU report states.
Gilles Le Maire, a counselor at the Canadian Embassy in Prague, says that “our EU friends have been provided with information on the criteria and process to achieve visa exemption.”
These criteria include a country’s visa-refusal rate, immigration violation rate, passport security regulations, passport issuing system, system of collecting and providing information on lost and stolen passports and its security and refugee claims, according to the report.
Canadians have been able to travel to the Czech Republic without a visa since 2004, Beneš says.
Canada had lifted its visa requirement for Czechs in April 1996 but reinstated it in October 1997 “following the arrival in Canada of many non bona fide temporary visitors abusing the opportunity of entering Canada without a visa,” Le Maire says.
Today, about 8,000 to 10,000 Czechs apply for Canadian visas every year. “Over 90 percent of applications are processed, and visas issued, the same day the application is submitted,” he says. The cost is Canadian $75 ($75/1,470 Kč) for a single-entry visa and Canadian $150 for a multiple-entry visa.
Double standards?
The EU-Canada visa flap comes on the heels of similar high-profile issue for the Czech Republic. Currently, the United States also does not allow Czechs to cross its borders without visas. Much has been made of this issue recently as Czechs debate whether to host a U.S. missile-shield radar on their soil and ask what the United States is prepared to do for them.
But the EU report does not threaten imminent consequences for the United States. The reason, Roscam Abbing says, is that “the United States has just revised quite significantly its visa policy. At this point in time there is no need for us to propose measures [against the U.S.].”
He adds that the EU will closely monitor how the United States proceeds with its visa plans. “The [European] Commission reserves the right to propose retaliatory measures if the expected progress toward full visa reciprocity fails to materialize in good time,” the report states.
Australia had also been criticized in previous EU reports for not allowing all EU citizens to travel there without visas. But it has since announced it will revisit its visa policy and will lift restrictions on all 27 EU countries, Roscam Abbing says.

Kimberly Ashton can be reached at kashton@praguepost.com


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Reader's comments:

add your comment
[06:58 16/06/2008] : I saw it on this site that it is possible to approve my application here. I want to work in Canada.
Is there any program from which I can be able
to get a free visa?
idowu wole
abeokuta
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