There are still no clear developments on Malta’s entry into the US Visa Vaiver Programme as new legislative proposals going through in the USA would apply new checks to all EU states – a development that will delay EU states’ entry into the programme.
Under the US Visa Waiver Programme only 15 EU countries do not have to apply for visas. People from the other 12 EU countries, including Malta, still need to get a visa to go to the USA.
The new checks will involve the biometric screening of passengers’ ten fingerprints and the screening of passengers through an e-travel authorisation system (Electronic Travel Authorisation) where a “green light” would authorise travel but a “yellow light” would mean the traveller would have to go to the US consulate to be interviewed.
Other checks include passenger-name-record (PNR) data access, immediate reporting to the USA of lost and stolen passports – of which there are hundreds of thousands a year in the EU – and standards for airports and baggage security and agreements for the repatriation of any visitors who violate US law.
Although the European Commission has told the US government that any agreement must be negotiated with the EU as a whole, and not on a country-by-country basis, the US Department for Homeland Security has told the EU it intends to start negotiations in the autumn and look at each country, one at a time, to determine the security risk.
The EU position has been that all 27 member states have to be treated equally. But by a meeting in January 2007, despite a pledge by George Bush, the US came up front with a whole series of new demands before they would add 12 EU countries to the Visa Waiver Scheme.