The European Commission welcomes the provisional political agreement reached today between the European Parliament and the Council on the revision of the visa suspension mechanism, proposed by the Commission in October 2023. The revised rules are a further step in effectively deterring and addressing situations of abuse of visa-free travel.
Visa-free travel is a key pillar of the Schengen area, bringing economic and societal benefits to Europe. At the same time, the evolving geopolitical context has brought new challenges linked to visa-free travel. These include increased irregular arrivals due to the lack of alignment with the EU's visa policy, investor citizenship schemes in visa-free countries, or hybrid threats, such as state-sponsored instrumentalisation of migrants. The new rules agreed today will allow for swifter and more decisive action to address these challenges.
The updated rules include:
- New grounds to suspend visa-free regimes: it will now be possible to trigger the visa suspension mechanism not only in case of sudden and substantial increase in irregular migration, lack of readmission cooperation, or security risks, but also in cases of insufficient alignment with the EU's visa policy, hybrid threats, the operation of investor citizenship schemes, and the deterioration of the external relations between the EU and visa-free non-EU countries;
- Lower thresholds to trigger the suspension mechanism, to make it easier to act in cases of misuse of visa- free arrangements;
- A swifter and more flexible procedure, to react faster in case of need (for instances in case of a high increase in arrivals or the existence of security threats), and to allow more time for remedial actions by the partner country;
- Stronger monitoring and reporting obligations: The Commission will now report to the European Parliament and the Council on any visa-free countries where challenges are identified.
Next steps
The Regulation must now be formally adopted by the European Parliament and the Council before it enters into force, which will happen 20 days after publication in the Official Journal of the EU.
Background
The proposal to revise the Visa Suspension Mechanism was announced in October 2023. The EU currently has a visa-free regime with 60 non-EU countries. Nationals of these countries can enter the Schengen area for short stays of up to 90 days in any 180-day period without a visa.
The Visa Suspension Mechanism was introduced in 2013 to enable a temporary suspension of the visa exemption in case of a sudden and substantial increase in irregular migration. The mechanism was subsequently revised in 2017 to make it easier for Member States to notify circumstances leading to a possible suspension to enable the Commission to trigger the suspension mechanism on its own initiative.
