Just FYI for americans travelling to europe. I heard about this and I found this on snopes: This is just FYI so keep the politics out of it.
Lawmakers in the European Union are considering a measure that would require Americans visiting member countries in the summer of 2017 to apply for holiday visas in lieu of waivers.
According to
Reuters, the proposal came in response to the exclusion of four nations (including Cyprus) from the United States’ visa waiver program:
The European Parliament called on the EU executive to force Americans to apply for visas before visiting Europe this summer, stepping up pressure to resolve a long-running transatlantic dispute on the issue.
The European Commission stressed it was pursuing a diplomatic resolution to the row, leaving it unlikely that it would act on the vote by lawmakers setting a May deadline to impose visas – a move that could hurt Europe’s tourism sector.
Washington refuses to grant visa-free access to people from four east European states and Cyprus, while those from the other 23 member states can enter using the U.S. visa waiver program. EU rules call for equal treatment for all Union citizens.
Quartz offered a more
direct summary of the years-long dispute over reciprocity:
The reason is simple. American visitors can enjoy visa-free travel throughout the bloc, but the US doesn’t reciprocate. EU travelers from some member countries still need visas to enter the US, including citizens of Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland, and Romania.
The European Parliament passed a non-binding motion on March 2 [2017] to temporarily reintroduce visa requirements for US citizens “within two months.” The dispute has been running since 2014, when the European Commission was first notified that five countries, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Japan, and the US, were failing to reciprocate visa-free travel to all EU citizens. Since then, Australia, Brunei, and Japan have all granted visa-free travel for all EU citizens, with Canada promising to do so in December. The US, meanwhile, hasn’t budged.
The European Commission, the executive decider on the matter, had until 2016 to respond to the first notification, but has yet to take any legal action. Though European lawmakers imposed another deadline for the Commission to respond, they don’t have the power to enforce the request.