Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the fulfilment by Colombia of the relevant criteria in view of the negotiation of a visa waiver agreement between the European Union and Colombia

European Parliament and Council Regulation No 509/2014 (hereinafter the ‘amending Regulation’) amended Council Regulation No 539/2001 and in particular its annexes containing the lists of third countries whose nationals must be in possession of visas when crossing the external borders and those whose nationals are exempt from that requirement.

Nineteen countries were transferred from Annex I (visa obligation) to Annex II (visa exemption), namely Colombia, Dominica, Grenada, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Peru, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, the United Arab Emirates and Vanuatu. The amending Regulation further specified that exemption from the visa requirement for nationals of these 19 countries should only apply from the date of entry into force of an agreement on visa waiver to be concluded by each of these countries with the European Union.

Recital 5 of the amending Regulation states that before opening negotiations on bilateral visa waiver agreements with Colombia and Peru, the Commission would have to further assess the situation of these two countries with regard to the criteria set out in the amending Regulation. Indeed, the amending Regulation has formalised (by transferring them from a recital to a new article) and enlarged the traditional list of criteria that were being considered until now.

The non-exhaustive list of the criteria that henceforth determine, based on a case-by-case assessment, the third countries whose nationals are subject to, or exempt from, the visa obligation, can be found in Article 1(1) of the amending Regulation: ‘illegal immigration, public policy and security, economic benefit, in particular in terms of tourism and foreign trade, and the Union’s external relations with the relevant third countries, including, in particular, considerations of human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as the implications of regional coherence and reciprocity’.

With this report, and a separate one adopted in parallel covering Peru, the Commission fulfils the above-mentioned requirement. Both reports are accompanied by Commission staff working documents presenting the detailed data that underpin their conclusions and containing information about the data sources and methodology used to produce the assessment.

EUR-Lex: COM(2014)665: Follow the progress of this report through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2014:665:FIN

EUR-Lex: SWD(2014)329: Commission Staff Working Document accompanying the report http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD:2014:329:FIN

ESO: Background information: Colombia and Peru fulfil the criteria for visa-free access to the Schengen area http://www.europeansources.info/record/colombia-and-peru-fulfil-the-criteria-for-visa-free-access-to-the-schengen-area/

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