Revision of the visa code

Briefing 27-04-2018

Although an increasing number of people have been travelling to the EU for tourism and business in recent years, visa application procedures are still costly and cumbersome. With the recast proposal on the visa code, the Commission aims to facilitate tourism, trade and business, whilst strengthening security and mitigating irregular migration. The impact assessment accompanying the proposal provides an overall convincing analysis tackling the problems of (1) insufficient finances to support visa processing; and (2) Member States' diverging practices when issuing multiple-entry visas. The Commission, however, also proposed (3) to address the lack of cooperation of some third countries in readmission matters in the visa code. One would have expected a more thorough analysis on this last aspect considering that there is no hard evidence on how visa leverage can translate into better cooperation with third countries on readmission. The Commission made efforts to consult with stakeholders and provide data, yet, the IA displays a general lack of data, statistics and evidence.