Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-23-Speech-3-038"
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"en.20080423.3.3-038"2
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"(
) I should like to briefly inform you of the progress of the visa waiver talks and the talks on ESTA. To begin with, I should like to say that, for the European Union, visa policy is an extremely important issue and that, ever since new Member States joined the European Union, both the Commission and all the presidencies have made huge efforts so that all countries and citizens would have to meet the same conditions for entry into the United States of America, and so that each of them would be included in the visa waiver programme. The abolition of visas would, of course, mean that all the citizens of the European Union are equal.
This year the USA have started with certain procedures, and have opened their doors for the visa waiver programme. They began with exclusively bilateral talks, and this is where some misapprehensions were encountered. Some intensive discussions were held which we, the Presidency, in conjunction with the Commission, clarified at the beginning of this year, and following a number of meetings a twin-track cooperation system in this area was agreed. This approach was also confirmed at the Trio's EU–USA meeting held in Slovenia on 12 March.
A twin-track system means that the Commission is to be given a mandate to negotiate and to reach an agreement with the United States of America in connection with matters concerning the European Union, and at the same time all the countries can hold talks at a bilateral level concerning matters which fall within the competency of the Member States. On 18 April, at its latest session, the Justice and Internal Affairs Council also voted in favour of granting the Commission a mandate, so that now the Commission too can begin with such talks. We hope that this twin-track cooperation will be transparent. Some Member States have already commenced with preliminary bilateral talks as to how the agreements should look, although so far nothing has been put in writing. We expect that both the Member States and the Commission will be transparent, so that we can then act at that level.
In touching upon the subject of electronic travel authorisation, I must mention that we have had several discussions in this respect. Jointly with the Commission and the American side we have held so-called exploratory talks. From the data which have so far been available, it is evident that at present the United States of America will not be requesting any additional information apart from the data which passengers already voluntarily provide on flights to the United States of America when filling in the I-94 form, which is green for those who have a visa system. This is extremely important.
In the current talks we have also established, and it has been agreed, that such controls will be free of charge and, once issued, the authorisation would be valid for two years. In fact, once this system is in place the citizens would send their details via the Internet to the United States authorities, which would then process them in the same way in the future as they do now.
There is also another topic which deserves particular mention, namely the talks with the United States of America in connection with a high level team of experts as regards the protection of personal data. So far we have managed to agree on twelve principles and we have established that they are identical. One principle is still open. I hope that by the end of June we shall reach a point where we shall conclude that it is possible to continue the discussions and to provide the team with a different mandate, in order to commence preparations for talks on the possibility of reaching a framework agreement with the United States of America in this area.
Why do we need this framework agreement? Firstly, we wish to keep in line with the resolutions that the European Parliament adopted in December last year, whereby it was particularly expressed that such an agreement would be desirable. Of course, we believe that the opportunity to have negotiations and the opportunity of reaching agreement under such an umbrella agreement are possible only if in line with the principles and once the Lisbon Treaty has been adopted, which means jointly with Parliament, with the Council and with the Commission. Only a consensus between all three bodies will enable us to achieve common principles and the common principles of action. At the same time, of course, once we have such an umbrella agreement, we shall continue individually to decide on any exchange of information on a case-by-case basis. This agreement will not be able to cover everything that follows. That is to say, the current situation is such that, for every agreement, these principles are repeatedly raised and repeatedly negotiated at all negotiations. If we had such common principles providing us with a basis, the concrete agreements and treaties would, of course, be in a much better position. Mr President, this is all I briefly wanted to say."@en1
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