Considerations on COM(2022)658 - Amending various regulations as regards the digitalisation of the visa procedure - Main contents
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This page contains a limited version of this dossier in the EU Monitor.
| dossier | COM(2022)658 - Amending various regulations as regards the digitalisation of the visa procedure. |
|---|---|
| document | COM(2022)658  |
| date | November 22, 2023 |
(2) The initiative is in line with the general EU approach to encourage the modernisation and digitalisation of public services and the Commission communication on the 2030 Digital compass: the European way for the digital decade 44 . Since the entry into force of Regulation (EC) No 810/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council 45 in 2010 and the start of operations of the Visa Information System (VIS) in 2011 under Regulation (EC) No 767/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council 46 , migration and security challenges faced in recent years have considerably transformed the visa policy context. In addition, significant technological developments provide new opportunities to make the Schengen visa application process smoother and more effective for third-country nationals and Member States authorities.
(3) The COVID-19 pandemic, which led to the slowing down of Schengen visa operations worldwide partly due to the difficulty of receiving visa applicants in consulates and Visa Application Centres, prompted Member States to call upon the Commission to speed up work on digitalisation of visa procedures.
(4) The New Pact on Migration and Asylum proposed by the Commission on 23 September 2020 set the objective of making the visa procedure fully digitalised by 2025, with a digital visa and the ability to submit visa applications online.
(5) While visa processing is already partially digitalised, with applications and decisions recorded in the VIS, two important steps remain paper-based: the visa application process and the issuance of the visa to the applicant by means of a visa sticker. This creates a burden for all stakeholders, in particular for Member States authorities issuing visas and visa applicants. Member States are aware of this and some of them have already implemented digital solutions in order to provide applicants with a modern and user-friendly application procedure and to improve the efficiency of handling visa applications.
(6) Visa applicants should be able to apply for a visa online through a single EU platform, regardless of the Member State of destination. This tool should automatically determine which Member State is competent to examine an application, in particular where the applicant intends to visit several Member States. Member States will only need to check whether the tool determined the correct competent Member State.
(7) The EU online application platform should provide the applicant with up-to-date information on Schengen short-stay visas and a guidance tool with which the applicant can find all the necessary information regarding the requirements and procedures, such as, but not limited to, whether a visa is required and what type of visa; the amount of the visa fee; the Member State competent for handling the application; the supporting documents required; the need for an appointment to collect biometrics or the possibility to apply online without an appointment. The EU application platform should also allow to establish a secure electronic communication between the applicant and the competent consulate or the central authorities of the competent Member State by electronic means, should additional documents or an interview be required.
(8) Visa applicants should be able to submit their application, provide data required in the application form, provide a scanned copy of the travel document, and provide supporting documents and travel medical insurance in digital format through the EU application platform. In order to enable applicants to save information relating to their application, the online application platform should be able to store data temporarily. Once the applicant has submitted the online application and the Member States perform the appropriate checks, the application file will be transferred to the national system of the competent Member State and stored there. Consulates would consult the information stored at a national level and push only the required data to the central VIS.
(9) Appearing in person at the consulate or external service provider should, in principle, be mandatory only for first time applicants and applicants who have acquired a new travel document, which needs to be verified, and for the collection of biometric identifiers.
(10) Repeat applicants should be able to apply fully online within a period of 59 months after their initial successful application provided that they apply with the same travel document. Once this period of time has elapsed, biometrics should be collected again, as referred to in Regulation (EC) No 810/2009, under which biometric data are, in principle, to be collected every 59 months, starting from the date of the first collection.
(11) Specific provisions apply to third-country nationals subject to a visa requirement, who are family members of citizens of the Union to whom Directive 2004/38/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council 47 applies or of third-country nationals enjoying the right of free movement equivalent to that of Union citizens under an agreement between the Union and its Member States, on the one hand, and a third country, on the other, and who do not hold a residence card pursuant to Directive 2004/38/EU, or of UK nationals who are beneficiaries of the Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community 48 (EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement) in relation to their host State, and who do not hold a EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement residence document.
(12) Article 21(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union stipulates that every citizen of the Union shall have the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States, subject to the limitations and conditions laid down in the Treaties and by the measures adopted to give them effect. The respective limitations and conditions are to be found in Directive 2004/38/EC. As confirmed by the Court of Justice of the European Union, family members referred to under recital 11 have not only the right to enter the territory of the Member State but also to obtain an entry visa for that purpose. Member States must grant such persons every facility to obtain the necessary visas which must be issued free of charge as soon as possible and on the basis of an accelerated procedure and with due regards to the procedural safeguards that apply to them. Against this background, in particular, such family members should be entitled to lodge their visa application, their application for a confirmation of a valid visa in a new travel document or their application for the extension of their visa without using the EU application platform, as this may facilitate their visa application. In such a case, they should be entitled to choose to lodge their applications in person at the consulate or at the external service providers. In addition, the EU online visa application platform should fully take into account the rights and facilitations granted to the beneficiaries of the free movement acquis. The same applies with regard to family members of UK nationals who are beneficiaries of the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement in relation to their host State, by virtue of Article 14(3) of the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement.
(13) Special provisions should apply in individual cases because of humanitarian reasons or to Heads of State or government and members of a national government with accompanying spouses, and the members of their official delegation when they are invited by Member States’ governments or by international organisations for an official purpose, sovereigns and other senior members of a royal family, when they are invited by Member States’ governments or by international organisations for an official purpose.
(14) Special provisions which should apply in individual cases because of humanitarian reasons could cover digital accessibility issues
(15) A third party authorised by the visa applicant or empowered by law to represent them should be able to lodge an application on their behalf, provided this person’s identity is included in the application form. It should be possible for travellers to authorise commercial intermediaries to create and submit an application on their behalf.
(16) Each applicant should submit a completed application form using the EU application platform, including a declaration of the authenticity, completeness, correctness and reliability of the data submitted and a declaration of the veracity and reliability of the statements made. Each applicant should also state that they have understood the conditions for entry referred to in Regulation (EU) 2016/399 of the European Parliament and of the Council 49 and that they could be requested to provide the relevant supporting documents at each entry. Application forms for minors should be submitted and electronically signed by a person exercising permanent or temporary parental authority or legal guardianship.
(17) ]The payment of the visa fee should be made by using a third-party gateway linked to the online application platform and the payments would be directly transferred to the appropriate Member State. The data required for securing the electronic payment should not form part of data stored in VIS.
(18) The EU application platform will also contain the appointment tool, which the Member State may decide to use to manage appointments at their consulates or the external service providers. While the use of such tool should remain optional, as it might not be appropriate across all locations and for all consulates, Member States should nevertheless use local Schengen cooperation to discuss whether a harmonised approach regarding the use of the appointment tool could be followed in specific third countries or specific locations.
(19) The system should notify the applicant if information is missing and the system should provide the applicant with the possibility of correcting the application. The EU application platform should indicate to the applicant of the admissibility of his/her application via an automated admissibility pre-check. The pre-check should ensure that the information provided fulfils the admissibility requirements for the requested visa.
(20) Where the competent consulate or the central authorities of the competent Member State finds that it is responsible to examine the application, it should accept it and the data should be imported into the national system from the temporary storage as established by the VIS Regulation and deleted from the temporary storage with the exception of contact data.
(21) Applicants should be notified of the decision taken by the competent Member State on their application by electronic means, indicating whether the visa is issued; refused; confirmed to a new travel document; extended; annulled or revoked, in accordance with Regulations (EC) No 810/2009 and (EC) No 767/2008.
(22) In order to reduce security risks related to counterfeited and stolen visa stickers, a visa should be issued in digital format and no longer as a visa sticker affixed to the travel document.
(23) In order to ensure maximum security and prevent counterfeiting or forgery, the notification of digital visa should be in the form of a 2D barcode, cryptographically signed by the Country Signing Certificate Authority (CSCA) of the issuing Member State. In case VIS is unavailable or unreachable, checks would rely on a 2D barcode from the signing authority.
(24) In case the travel document of the visa holder is lost, stolen or has expired and the visa is still valid, the visa holder could apply via the EU application platform for the confirmation of the visa in a new travel document under the condition that the new travel document is of the same type and issued by the same country as the lost, stolen or expired travel document. The visa holder should appear in person to the consulate or the external service provider to present the new travel document in order to verify the authenticity of the new travel document.
(25) Data stored in the EU application platform should be safeguarded using privacy-enhancing implementation measures.
(26) External service providers should have access to the EU application platform only to retrieve and review submitted applications; verify the data temporarily stored (for example, scan of travel document); collect and upload biometric identifiers; perform quality checks of the uploaded supporting documents; confirm that an application has been reviewed and thus making it available to the consulate for further processing; external service providers should not have access to data stored in VIS.
(27) It is necessary to determine the date from which operations start, including the digital visa and the EU application platform. A Member State may, for a period of 5 years from the date of start of operations, decide not to avail itself of the online EU application platform. Nevertheless, a Member State may notify that it wishes to join the online EU application platform before the end of the transition period. During the transitional period, if the Member State processing its visa applications decided not to avail itself of the online EU application platform, visa holders will still be able to verify the digital visas using the web-service of the EU application platform.
(28) EU application platform should contain a functionality for applicants to verify their digital visas.
(29) The Member States which do not apply the Schengen acquis in full, and therefore do not have access to VIS to enter visa applications and store digital visas, should continue to issue visas in the form of a uniform format (sticker).
(30) In order to enable the application of Decision No 565/2014/EU, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Romania should have read-only access of digital visas stored in VIS.
(31) The European Union Agency for the Operational Management of Large-Scale IT Systems in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (eu-LISA) should be responsible for the technical development and operational management of the EU application platform and its components, as part of VIS.
(32) The system architecture of the EU application platform should reuse the existing and upcoming systems that are part of the new framework for interoperability to the full extent possible, and in particular European Travel Authorisation Information System (ETIAS) and Entry-Exit System (EES), while respecting the current limitations of technology and the current investments made by Member States in their own national systems.
(33) Checking of digital visas at the border should rely on the existing and upcoming EU system architecture for border management and should consist of the visa holder’s information stored in the VIS. This information should be verified with biometric data by Member States authorities.
(34) The format for short-stay visas, as set by Council Regulation (EC) No 1683/95 50 , is also used for long-stay visas. Therefore, the Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement 51 should be amended to enable that long-stay visas are also issued in digital format.
(35) Since the introduction of digital visas would obviate the need for affixing the physical visa sticker, the Regulation Council Regulation (EC) No 333/2002 52 setting the uniform format for forms for affixing the visa issued by Member States to persons holding travel documents not recognised by the Member State should be modified accordingly.
(36) Facilitated Transit Documents (FTD) and Facilitated Rail Transit Documents (FRTD) constitute documents having the value of transit visas authorising their holders to enter in order to pass through the territories of Member States in accordance with the provisions of the Schengen acquis concerning the crossing of external borders. Facilitated Transit Documents (FTD) and Facilitated Rail Transit Documents (FRTD) are issued in uniform formats and the application procedure is paper-based. In order to reflect digitalisation developments, and Council Regulation (EC) No 693/2003 53 and Council Regulation (EC) No 694/2003 54 , should be amended to enable the issuance in digital format, as well as digital applications.
(37) In order to ensure that the application form and the refusal forms cater for the possibilities when a visa applicant submitted their application via the EU application platform or not, the power to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 290 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union should be delegated to the Commission to amend the list of information that the EU application platform should contain and to amend the appropriate standard forms and formats. It is of particular importance that the Commission carry out appropriate consultations during its preparatory work, including at expert level, and that those consultations be conducted in accordance with the principles laid down in the Interinstitutional Agreement of 13 April 2016 on Better Law-Making 55 . In particular, to ensure equal participation in the preparation of delegated acts, the European Parliament and the Council should receive all documents at the same time as Member States' experts, and their experts should systematically have access to meetings of Commission expert groups dealing with the preparation of delegated acts.
(38) Since the objectives of this Regulation, namely, the establishment of the European online visa application platform and the introduction of a digital visa builds on other initiatives aiming, on the one hand, at streamlining and harmonising the procedures in the context of the common visa policy and, on the other hand, at aligning travel, entry requirements and border checks within the Schengen Area with the new digital era, the amendments of the related legislation are only possible at Union level and are part of the Schengen acquis. The Union may adopt measures in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity as set out in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union. In accordance with the principle of proportionality, as set out in that Article, this Regulation does not go beyond what is necessary in order to achieve those objectives.
(39) This Regulation is without prejudice to the application of Directive 2004/38/EC and of Part Two of the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement.
(40) This Regulation respects fundamental rights and observes the principles recognised in particular by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The introduction of an EU application platform and of a digital visa will fully respect the right to protection of personal data, the respect for private and family life, the rights of the child, and the protection of vulnerable persons All safeguards on fundamental rights included in the Visa Information System Regulation will remain fully applicable in the context of the future EU Visa application platform and of the digital visa, in particular regarding to the rights of child. The platform will have to take into account requirements laid down in the Accessibility Directive 56 to ensure an easy access for people with disabilities.
(41) In accordance with Articles 1 and 2 of the Protocol No 22 on the Position of Denmark annexed to the Treaty on European Union and to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, Denmark is not taking part in the adoption of this Regulation and is not bound by it or subject to its application. Given that this Regulation builds upon the Schengen acquis, Denmark shall, in accordance with Article 4 of that Protocol, decide within a period of six months after the Council has decided on this Regulation whether it will implement it in its national law.
(42) This Regulation constitutes a development of the provisions of the Schengen acquis in which Ireland does not take part 57 ; Ireland is therefore not taking part in the adoption of this Regulation and is not bound by it or subject to its application.
(43) As regards Iceland and Norway, this Regulation constitutes a development of the provisions of the Schengen acquis within the meaning of the Agreement concluded by the Council of the European Union and the Republic of Iceland and the Kingdom of Norway concerning the association of those two States with the implementation, application and development of the Schengen acquis 58 which fall within the area referred to in Article 1, point B of Council Decision 1999/437/EC 59 .
(44) As regards Switzerland, this Regulation constitutes a development of the provisions of the Schengen acquis within the meaning of the Agreement between the European Union, the European Community and the Swiss Confederation on the Swiss Confederation's association with the implementation, application and development of the Schengen acquis 60 which fall within the area referred to in Article 1, point B, of Decision 1999/437/EC read in conjunction with Article 3 of Council Decision 2008/146/EC 61 .
(45) As regards Liechtenstein, this Regulation constitutes a development of the provisions of the Schengen acquis within the meaning of the Protocol between the European Union, the European Community, the Swiss Confederation and the Principality of Liechtenstein on the accession of the Principality of Liechtenstein to the Agreement between the European Union, the European Community and the Swiss Confederation on the Swiss Confederation's association with the implementation, application and development of the Schengen acquis 62 which fall within the area referred to in Article 1, point B, of Decision 1999/437/EC read in conjunction with Article 3 of Council Decision 2011/350/EU 63 .
(46) This Regulation constitutes an act building upon, or otherwise relating to, the Schengen acquis within, respectively, the meaning of Article 3(2) of the 2003 Act of Accession, Article 4(2) of the 2005 Act of Accession and Article 4(2) of the 2011 Act of Accession,
(47) The European Data Protection Supervisor was consulted in accordance with Article 42 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council 64 and delivered an opinion on [XX] 65 .