African news. The European Union’s (EU) Commission has adopted proposals to introduce visa restrictions for passport holders from Senegal and The Gambia.
Why does the EU want to introduce visa restrictions on Senegal and Gambia?
The decision was made on the 9th of November and was introduced as leverage to push these two countries to cooperate more on the readmission of their nationals who are currently staying illegally in one of the EU countries.
According to the commission, the measures take were part of the annual assessment on the implementation of readmission with third country nationals.
According to SchengenVisa, while the first assessment was published in February 2021, later in July of the same year, the Commission announced the first visa measures taken against Bangladesh, Iraq and The Gambia, according to which, the citizens of these countries would be subject to tighter visa application procedures.
“The measures mean that all applicants have to submit a full set of documentary evidence and that the 15 calendar days processing period as well as the issuing of multiple entry visas will be suspended. The optional visa fee waiver for holders of diplomatic and service passports should also be suspended,” the Commission had said at the time.
This however did not mean that citizens of these countries were stripped of the right to apply for a visa, or to receive one.
The EU came up with this decisions after dealing with one the biggest migration waves in 2014 and now work around preventing it and reducing migration and human smuggling into the EU.
Member states agreed to update the visa code in order to use it as a leverage in cooperation with third countries on readmission.
What does the code state?
In cases when a country is not cooperating to take back their citizens staying illegally in the EU, as well as not meeting their part to prevent illegal migration to the EU, the latter can introduce stricter conditions for getting a visa to its territory, for the citizens of the non-cooperating country wrote SchengenVisa.
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