The Schengen visa rules are always challenging and they need regular changes with the passage of time. For this reason, European Union is now updating ‘visa code’ and bringing important changes in order to introduce more facilities for frequent travelers and those who want to have multiple entry visa of Schengen zone. On 20.02.2019 EU ambassadors approved on behalf of the Council the informal agreement reached between representatives of the European Parliament and the Romanian Presidency of the Council on the proposal amending the visa code.
Big Changes
The major changes which have been made cover better conditions for legal and regular travelers, changes to visa application fees and better cooperation on readmission of irregular migrants. Here will we discuss this one by one to understand it properly.
1- Better chances and conditions for legal travelers
There have been introduced changes to improve better conditions for regular and legal travelers with following improvements:
- Once a candidate wants to apply for a Shcengen visa, he/she can apply for the visa up to 6 months and no later than 15 days before the start of the journey
- The application form can be completed and signed electronically.
- Conditions will be more easy for those who are regular travelers and want to apply for multiple visa. A harmonized approach to the issuing of multiple-entry visas for regular travelers with a positive visa history is introduced, with a progressive increase in validity ranging from 1 to 5 years.
2- Increase in Visa Application Fees
The visa application fees will be 80 euros instead of 60 euros. This has been decided so that the member states can easily cover process cost etc. And further in future, after the time of every three years, the visa fees will be revised.
3- Better cooperation on readmission of irregular migrants
The EU has decided to take serious steps towards third countries that do not cooperate towards illegal admission of its national into EU member states. There are a lot of countries whose nationals enter EU illegally and then apply for Asylum. And even after having the asylum application rejected by the member state, they can’t be deported because they hide their identities and their embassies do not cooperate to in order to deport them from EU country. In simple words, for example, many countries of Africa, Pakistan, India, Syria, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Iraq could be badly hit for its new visa applicants if the governments do not cooperate with EU member states to decrease the rate of illegal immigrants from their countries. The mechanism will be based on the fact that the Commission will regularly access third countries’ cooperation on readmission. his will be done on the basis points:
- Where a country is not cooperating, the Commission will propose that the Council adopt an implementing decision applying specific restrictive visa measures related to visa processing and, eventually, visa fee (this will surely decrease visa ratio and strict policies of visa issuance).
- If the third country does cooperate on readmission, the Commission may propose to the Council to adopt an implementing decision providing for a reduction in visa fees, a reduction in the time to decide on visa applications or an increase in the period of validity of multiple entry visas. The implementing decision will be valid for no more than one year, and can be renewed (this will surely result more visa ratio and stream-lined visa system).