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Ilhan Kyuchyuk demands full visa liberalisation for the USA

Ilhan Kyuchyuk, Member of the European Parliament, with a parliamentary question to the European question, demands full visa liberalisation for the USA to all 28 Member States as part of the negotiations on a possible TTIP agreement.

On 10 October 2014, the Commission published its annual report on “Assessing the situation of non-reciprocity with certain third countries in the area of visa policy” outlining the current state of affairs of tripartite discussions on visa-reciprocity but there were no clear indications on what concrete actions the Commission will take to address non-reciprocity of visas between the USA and Bulgaria. Ilhan Kyuchyuk insisted the Commission to consider the current breach of the principle of equal treatment of EU citizens, due to the absence of visa reciprocity for Bulgarians, Romanians, Cypriot and Polish people wishing to travel to the USA.

Kyuchyuk mentioned that the visa refusal rate for 2013 comes up to 19,9% for Bulgarian citizens, and the visa restrictions for these five member states are some kind of obstacle for more than 70 million Europeans to travel free.

According to him, this limit for 14% of the European citizens will be the real barrier to the successful implementation of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)between the EU and the US.

Regarding to this, Ilhan Kyuchyuk insisted the Commission to take action and demand full visa liberalisation for the USA to all 28 Member States as part of the negotiations on a possible TTIP agreement.

Тази публикация е достъпна и на следните езици: Bulgarian