Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-18-Speech-4-202"
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"en.20010118.11.4-202"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, my report is based on an initiative by the French Republic concerning third-country nationals, who are holders of what is called a national long-stay visa; in other words, one valid for no more than three months, which has been issued by a Member State of the Schengen area. These third-country nationals are awaiting their residence permits in the Member State that approved their entry.
Moreover, I support the aim to implement a uniform long-stay visa system, as already currently exists for short-stay visas. However, I hope, and I believe that we should all hope, that this initiative should be part of a clear, consistent, overall proposal from the Council and not part of an initiative which is sketchy in scope and shaky in its arrangements, like this one. That is why I shall ask the House to accept the amendments that I have made with the full support of the Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs.
Under current Community law, namely, Article 18 of the Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement, third-country nationals are only permitted to transit through the territory of other Member States in order to reach the country which issued the long-stay visa. Following their arrival in this country, third-country nationals cannot travel any further within the Schengen area until they have obtained what is called a residence permit. This is exactly where the problem lies. It can take several weeks, if not several months, for a residence permit to be issued, mainly due to cumbersome administrative procedures, poor coordination of administrative departments in some Member States, and because the person concerned has difficulty in finding out the correct procedure to follow.
Accordingly, and this concerns thousands of people every year throughout the Union, a holder of a long-stay visa and who has not yet received a residence permit, is in the least favourable position by comparison with other third-country nationals as far as freedom of movement in the Schengen area is concerned.
The fact that a whole raft of extremely stringent conditions must be fulfilled, in each of our countries, in order to obtain a national long-stay visa makes this situation even more paradoxical, and, to my mind, even more scandalous. Apart from cases involving family reunion, applicants for long-stay visas are subjected to a preliminary in-depth enquiry. They must prove that they have adequate resources and, depending on the circumstances, produce either a document to certify that they have been accepted in an educational or research establishment, or a valid employment contract.
The objective of the French Republic is simple and is very clearly stated in the Explanatory Statement. The aim is to enable freedom of movement in the Schengen area for holders of a national long-stay visa who are awaiting their residence permit. All of us, or so I hope, at least, share this objective which aims to facilitate freedom of movement for these nationals.
Therefore, the problem lies not in the objective itself, but in the way that the French Republic has chosen to achieve this goal and the consequences of this in terms of the discretionary powers of Member States with regard to citizens’ rights.
It is rather surprising that the French Republic initiative takes Articles 62(2) and 63(3) as its legal basis, as both of these relate to procedures and conditions for issuing visas. Yet, if the real aim of the initiative is to facilitate freedom of movement for nationals, the required legal basis is Article 62(3), which stipulates that the Council shall, within a period of five years of the Treaty of Amsterdam’s entry into force, adopt measures setting out the conditions under which nationals of third countries shall have the freedom to travel within the territory of the Member States during a period of no more than three months.
Ladies and gentlemen, the choice of legal basis is never an innocent choice. In reality, the legal basis selected in the French initiative proves that the main aim of this initiative is to harmonise conditions for issuing long-stay visas by bringing them into line with uniform short-stay visas. This means that, if we accept the proposal as presented by the French Republic, it would give any Member State involved in the closer cooperation under the Schengen Agreement the right to be informed of all requests for a long-stay visa made in every other country of the Schengen area, through what is called the prior consultation procedure, and, as a consequence, it would be able to block the freedom of movement by persons that this country does not approve. In practice, if we accept these arrangements, it would mean that, through the prior consultation procedure, the French government could request to be systematically informed if Spain were to issue a long-stay visa to an Algerian national tomorrow, and it would have the right to object to the request, without anyone’s knowledge, because currently no one knows which countries make use of the prior consultation procedure and the Council refuses to release the list of countries.
Therefore, I myself chose to amend the initiative of the French Republic in order to bring it into line with the stated objective, as set out in the Explanatory Statement, which is to facilitate the movement of holders of a national long-term visa while awaiting their residence permit."@en1
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