Thursday 4 February 2010

Freedom to travel for Schengen migrants on long-stay visas

The current situation has led to thousands of complaints, says the European Parliament rapporteur Carlos Coelho.




The Grahnlaw blog post Schengen residents with long-stay visa: Proposals on freedom to travel (3 February 2010) mentioned the travel restrictions on legally residing migrants with a national long-stay visa. We also mentioned the Regulations proposed by the European Commission in COM(2009) 90 final and COM(2009) 91 final to enable these expats with “D visas” to travel inside the Schengen area.


The proposals have now advanced in the European Parliament to the stage where the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) is set to adopt its report today, based on the draft prepared by Carlos Coelho (rapporteur):



Draft report PE430.461 on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending the Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement and Regulation (EC) No 562/2006 as regards movement of persons with a long-stay visa (COM(2009)0091 – C6 0076/2009 – 2009/0028(COD))



The other draft report is PE430.459 on the proposal for a Council regulation amending the Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement as regards long stay visa and alerts in the Schengen Information System (COM(2009)0090 – C6 0107/2009 – 2009/0025(CNS)).

Here the procedure will probably change from consultation to the ordinary legislative procedure, due to the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty.


Concerning both proposals the rapporteur noted the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, as well as the “omnibus Communication” being prepared with regard to the new legal bases. He also expressed uncertainty whether the national Parliaments have yet to be consulted and granted an 8 weeks period to react on the files which are pending at the moment when the Treaty of Lisbon comes into force.


We may be somewhat wiser with regard to the possible amendments and the procedures after the LIBE meeting today.

Anyway, improvements seem to be on their way for legal migrants on long-stay visas.




Ralf Grahn






P.S. Cross-border communication about European issues is important for our future, and Euroblogs offer an enjoyable way to improve our language skills.

Eva Peña in Barcelona writes expertly and critically about the challenges of the European Union and the EU politics of Spain on Eva en Europa (in Spanish).

Perhaps inspired by the Spanish presidency of the Council of the European Union, bloggers in Spain can now be found on a new aggregator Europeando.eu, with posts in Spanish, Catalan and Galician.

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2 comments:

  1. Dear Ralf,

    Thank you for your kind words. I'm flattered and happy to read you like my "critical" writing.
    Spanish Presidency is going on well, working hard, but... I'm afraid at the moment our economy is going through some turbulences.

    Regards and thank you for blogging on EUrope!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Eva,

    As I see it, one can hardly love Europe or one's country without being critical about them, so the choice of epithet was a mark of appreciation.

    ReplyDelete

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