Could the EU Restrict Travel From America?

Could the EU Restrict Travel From America?
Europe’s evolving visa rules could soon change travel for U.S. citizens.|©iStock/STILLFX

“The only constant is change.”

That aphorism, attributed to the Buddha, is a pithy summation of European immigration policies. In the last 36 months, we’ve seen Ireland and Spain eliminate their golden visas; Portugal remove housing from the list of eligible GV investments; Greece triple the price of its GV; Italy go from one of the most welcoming ancestral citizenship policies to one of the most restrictive; The EU force Malta to drop its citizenship by investment policy; France tighten its naturalization policies significantly; and Portugal double the time to citizenship by naturalization from 5 to 10 years.

The clear lesson here is that if you spot a favourable immigration opportunity in Europe, you should act on it immediately before it changes.

New changes on the horizon will apply to the entire European Union... And could potentially see Americans having to apply for a visa before traveling to the continent.

I’ve explained before how the EU dislikes citizenship by investment (CBI). They don’t dispute the fact that nations have the right to determine their own citizenship criteria. But they know that people who couldn’t get into the EU if they had to apply for a visa can easily do so if they buy a new passport from a country that currently has visa-free access. To Brussels, that’s an unacceptable security risk.

Earlier this year, the European Commission drafted a proposal that would eliminate visa-free access to any nation that sells citizenship. That includes five islands in the Caribbean, several in the Middle East and one in the Pacific. Another seven nations have announced new CBI policies.

Last week the European Parliament adopted that policy as official. It doesn’t mean that countries will immediately lose visa-free access to the EU—but it does mean that the European Commission can slap a ban on any nation without warning.

OK, you’re probably thinking, the United States doesn’t sell citizenship so why should that matter to us? Two reasons.

First, anyone thinking about buying a passport right now should factor in the possibility that they won’t be able to travel to Europe on that document.

Second, the European Parliament went much further than a ban on visa waivers for CBI nations. Under criteria that could lead to such a ban, it included human rights violations and a failure to abide by international court decisions. EU rapporteur Matjaž Nemec explained that since Europe is “the world’s most visited continent by tourists and business travellers alike… our visa policy is therefore one of our strongest foreign policy tools.”

In other words, if a country is judged to violate EU founding principles—principles that reflect its horrific experience of two world wars within a century, and another war raging on its doorstep—its citizens will no longer be automatically welcome.

That aspect of European visa policy is already in practice, although it’s never been spelled out. Countries that routinely violate human rights, like China and Russia, have never enjoyed visa waivers. Neither have any of the ex-Soviet Central Asian republics, most countries in the Middle East, and many African, Asian, and Latin American nations.

I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.

Love it or hate it, the current administration in Washington, D.C., stands accused of numerous human rights and international legal violations.

To cite one example, the US military is currently blasting civilian vessels out of the water in the Caribbean, claiming that drug runners are equivalent to invading military personnel. Under existing US and international law, that’s murder. Last week the admiral in charge of the US forces in the region resigned rather than implement this policy.

Other US human rights violations include the US policy of deporting individuals to nations known to practice torture, and to third nations where the deportee has no connection, like South Sudan. The same applies to the practice of detaining people without trial and access to an attorney and denying them habeas corpus.

And of course, the US already refuses to abide by decisions of the International Court.

Will that be enough to require US passport holders to get a visa before traveling to Europe?

Who knows. But just like the EU threat to nations that practice CBI, the possibility is now enshrined in official European Union policy.

The question now isn’t whether such a thing could possibly happen, but what the Trump administration would have to do to trigger it… and whether it would care if it did.

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