Tensions Rise Between U.S. and EU Officials Over Visa-Free Travel Transatlantic spat comes as Trump administration seeks to ramp up security checks at U.S. borders By Valentina Pop
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tensions-rise-between-u-s-and-eu-officials-over-visa-free-travel-1491499138
BRUSSELS—Tensions between senior U.S. and European Union officials escalated over the prospect of limiting visa-free travel for EU citizens due to U.S. security concerns.
European Migration and Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos on Thursday rebuffed comments made by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly about possibly reconsidering visa-free travel for EU citizens. The transatlantic spat comes as the Trump administration is seeking to ramp up security checks at U.S. borders, while the EU has just expanded its visa-free regime to Ukraine and its 45 million people.
Testifying before the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, Mr. Kelly suggested that the so-called Visa Waiver program allowing citizens from nearly all EU countries to travel to the U.S. without a visa could be reconsidered because of the potential risk that terrorists with EU passports could enter the U.S. unchecked.
He said that some 10,000 European citizens are fighting for Islamic State and could hop on a plane and travel visa-free to the U.S., because of borderless travel in Europe and the fact that “in many cases the countries where they’re citizens don’t know that they’ve been out of the country fighting in Syria.”
“That doesn’t keep me up at night too much but it does keep me up, so we’re looking at Visa Waiver,” Mr. Kelly said.
Mr. Avramopoulos, who recently met Mr. Kelly to discuss moving in the opposite direction and extending visa-free travel to all EU countries, reacted with surprise to this statement.
“We should be careful when using numbers. We estimate that around 5,000 EU citizens traveled to Syria and Iraq—not 10,000. But not all will come back: We estimate that about half of them are still there, many have died in fighting, some of those have returned to Europe,” Mr. Avramopoulos said. “We know who is back, and they are under very close scrutiny by national security services, flagged in security databases and monitored.”
He added that as of April 7, all travelers, be they EU citizens or not, will have their passports checked against security databases upon entering and leaving the bloc. Until now, EU citizens were exempt from such checks at the borders.CONTINUE AT SITE
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