TALLINN, Jul 23, BNS - Citizens of eight new member countries of the European Union, including Estonia, may start visiting the United States visa free already from the end of this year, a senior US Official said.
Richard Bart, an official of the Department of Homeland Security responsible for the US visa waiver program, told the newspaper Europolitics that Malta, Greece, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania would probably be involved in the program either in October or November.
Four further countries, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus, citizens of which require visas to enter the United States, will have to wait slightly longer, because they do not meet the US requirement that the proportion of rejected visa applications should not be higher than 10 percent.
Twelve member countries of the European Union, including Greece and all countries that acceded to the Union after 2004 except Slovenia have not acceded to the US visa waiver program.
On 12 March this year Estonian Interior Minister Juri Pihl and US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff signed the two countries' visa waiver memorandum, one of the precondition sto Estonia's accession to the visa waiver program. Several other new members of the EU signed similar documents.
Signing of the agreements generated dissatisfaction in the European Commission as well as in several member countries already enjoying visa waiver with the United States, who found that such agreements did go together with the common visa and border policy of the European Union.
In April EU interior and justice ministers endorsed a decision by which the European Commission was authorized to hold talks over the terms of the visa waiver program with the United States.
The decision also permitted Estonia and the other member countries wishing to acccede to the US visa waiver program to continue bilateral talks with the United States and accede at the first opportunity.
Tallinn newsroom, +372 610 8861, sise@bns.ee
