Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council – Seventh report on certain third countries’ maintenance of visa requirements in breach of the principle of reciprocity

Council Regulation (EC) No 539/2001 of 15 March 2001, listing the third countries whose nationals must be in possession of visas when crossing the external borders of the Member States (the "negative list") and those whose nationals are exempt from that requirement (the "positive list"), is the basic instrument of our common visa policy, providing a reciprocity mechanism for cases where a third country on the positive list maintains or introduces a visa requirement for the citizens of one or more Member States.

The current visa reciprocity mechanism was introduced by Council Regulation (EC) 851/2005 of 2 June 2005 amending Council Regulation (EC) 539/2001. In the framework of this mechanism, in case a third country on the positive list introduces a visa requirement for citizens of one or more Member States, the Commission must take steps to obtain the restoration of the visa-free travel by the third country concerned and it must provide a report to the Council which may be accompanied by a proposal on the temporary restoration of the visa requirement for nationals of the third country concerned. In addition, the Commission must provide bi-annual reports to the European Parliament and the Council on the situation of non-reciprocity which may be accompanied by appropriate proposals, if necessary.

The six regular visa reciprocity reports adopted by the Commission so far show that the current reciprocity mechanism has proven to be quite efficient: through the efforts made by the Commission and the Member States concerned, the number of cases of non-reciprocity which existed at the moment of its entry into force or at the moment of the entry into force of the Accession Treaty of 2005 - in total, nearly one hundred cases with 18 third countries - have been reduced considerably.

In accordance with the provisions of the existing reciprocity mechanism, the present, seventh, visa reciprocity report takes stock of the results of the efforts made since the adoption of the sixth report on 5 November 2010, with a view to achieving full visa reciprocity with all third countries on the positive list.

EUR-Lex: COM(2012)681: Follow the progress of this document through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2012:681:FIN

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