EU votes through visa price hike plan

BRUSSELS - The price of a visa for the EU's borderless Schengen zone is to go up from €35 to €60 next year due to higher costs for the so-called SIS II border control system which uses biometric data, such as fingerprint and DNA identification.

EU interior ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday (27 April) said the increase from today's €35 for transits and stays of up to three months will be implemented from the beginning of next year.

"We do want to have biometric visa and they will cost a bit more," EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini told reporters in Luxembourg.

Only Sweden, Greece and Hungary voted against the cost increase, which was first sought by France to cover higher costs for the so-called SIS II border control system which uses biometric data.

Greek interior minister Vyron Polydoras said the EU should apply a more flexible visa policy in EU special interest zones such as the Western Balkans, Russia and Ukraine.

"We have to encourage citizens from third countries to reach and get to know the European Union," he said, adding that Greece could not vote on the proposition as stated at the meeting.

The price hike will however not apply to Russia, while Ukraine and the Western Balkan countries will get a year's delay to negotiate agreements to maintain fees at €35, an Austrian presidency official said.

Only children under the age of six, schoolchildren and students on exchange programmes and teachers accompanying them, as well as academic researchers will not need visas.

Special agreements demanded

Western Balkan countries who in the future wish to pay €35 for a visa have to sign special price reduction agreements with the EU, linked to promises on readmitting citizens who are rejected at the EU border.

Russia has already signed an agreement with the union, with Ukraine and Macedonia deals under way.

Citizens from candidate states Romania and Bulgaria do not have to show a visa to enter the EU.

Ministers also decided that under the scheme, member states can decide themselves on visa fee waivers for individuals from all third countries on a case-by-case basis and can set their own prices for long-stay visas.

Bureaucracy will cost more than free visas

Commenting on the case-to-case principle that EU ministers had decided upon, executive director of NGO Policy Association for an Open Society (PASOS), Jeff Lovitt said that the move would make matters worse for cost-concerned countries.

"The case-to case policy will imply enormous time and money-consuming bureaucracy, and it would probably be cheaper for the member states to simply let visas be free instead."

Mr Lovitt, representing policy think-tanks in central and Eastern Europe and central Asia, also said that the very aim of the new technologically advanced visas - to fight terrorism and organised crime - would not be obtained by raising the price for cross-border travellers.

"Higher visa fees, is not going to make any difference against, for instance, cross-border crime or human trafficking," Mr Lovitt told EUobserver.

"The cost will not affect those who are not bothered by paying a higher visa-fee, like wealthy criminals, but rather ordinary poor people for whom the cost of €60 would mean that they cannot afford to visit family on the "wrong" side of the border.

The presidents of the European Movements from Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina also released a joint statement urging the EU to drop the price hikes plans.