It has been a while since I have last written an entry here. Several things make me upset about politics, and it is difficult to break them down into short and readable blog posts. The problem is each time I read about what Europe should do to draw the US' attention back to Europe, I can only shake my head for incomprehension. Europeans don't get it, do they? The questions should not be "what can Europe offer to the US", but "what can the US offer to Europe"? But Europeans never ask that question with the consequence that they hardly get anything in return from the US for concessions they make. Here is just one small example that I would like to address today: visa-free travel.
Let's just assume for a second that the visa-free travel to the United States of America granted to Europeans under the Visa-Waiver-Programme (VWP) and all its related requirements deserves to be qualified as visa-free travel. Let's assume that here, for the sake of argument.
To start with, visa-free travel agreements are usually based on a mere principle of reciprocity. Probably this is how it can be explained why Americans had to grant visa-free travel in the 80s to an increasing number of Europeans when Europe recovered from World War II and asserted itself with new economic power. Otherwise, Europe maybe would have stopped granting Americans the right to visit Europe without a visa. A similar shift in confidence can currently be seen in Russia who just announced to toughen its visa requirements for EU citizens travelling to Russia. By explicitly citing the principle of reciprocity, Russia thus demonstrates that it is not willing anymore to let Europeans get away with requirements that are so much more lenient to fulfill than the corresponding ones that are imposed on Russians wanting to come to Europe. It is a new confidence and awareness on Russia's part that it does not need to dwell in a situation of inferiority where it should be thankful for any visa-facilitation Europe might grant to Russian citizens.
Another application of the principles of reciprocity relates to countries' visa fee practice. For instance, some countries such as Argentina determine their visa fees based on the amount that their citizens have to pay for visas in other countries. In that sense reciprocity is a benchmark, where respecting it is the cost for visa-free travel or visa-facilitations. And it seems that based on the principle of reciprocity also Americans and Europeans have found a way to grant each other visa-free travel – with only some few exceptions still in place for the citizens of some new EU Member States for whom the European Commission is still working on achieving full visa-reciprocity. Hence, by allowing the visa-free travel of Americans, Europeans have paid the price for their corresponding privilege in the US.
Yet, the US at some point in time decided to believe they deserve more in order to uphold Europeans' right to visa-free travel to the US. In a trial of strength, they forced European Member States to grant US authorities access to Passenger-Name-Records (PNRs) held by European carriers operating flights to and from the US. The troubled history of blackmailing, threat of retaliation, the bypassing of the European Commission in this matter of Community competence, and the current state in limbo of the to-be-renegotiated EU-US PNR agreement would be too long to address here. What becomes clear though is that even if no explicit link is being made, the question of who can travel under the VWP is strictly considered in relation to the PNR question and recognized by all stakeholders. In that sense one has to read the statement of the Council of the European Union of March 2008 that affirms that:
"5. The Commission and the relevant working bodies of the Council are requested to urgently examine the different elements of the ongoing implementation of the VWP legislation […] In the meantime, in their contacts with the US on the matter, Member States should be guided by the following elements:
a. Regarding passenger record data, the recently signed EU-US PNR Agreement should suffice and no additional requirements should be added as compared with that Agreement."
This statement wasn't worth the paper it was written on, since some new EU Member States were lured nevertheless into disregarding it. In order to accelerate their accession to the VWP, these countries decided to conclude bilateral agreements with the US that would provide for the transfer of certain personal sensitive information contained in the PNRs even though their transfer to the US had been blocked by the European Court of Justice and were not covered by the EU-US PNR agreement.
But the story doesn't end here. The statement cited above continues:
"b. No commitments as to access for the US to EU/EC data bases or information systems."
Maybe EU Member States had better internalized this statement to avert what was to come: At the beginning of October 2010 it became known by the Austrian press that our dearest ally, the honorable United States of America, had blackmailed Austria to either grant US authorities access to Austrian police data bases or to have Austrians' right to travel to the US under the VWP revoked. Austria eventually ceded to the pressure, and it is highly speculated that other EU Member States have done so too. (For reports in English, see here and here.)
When I read this, I couldn't help but to feel ashamed for being a European. Are we just stupid or incompetent? How is it that Europeans constantly fail to make Americans pay for the data they require us to submit? Or do we just value visa-free travel to the US above everything else, so much that we are even willing to let the US blackmail us with it, that we are willing to give up the integrity of our personal data and fundamental rights? Or do we really believe we don't have any other choice?
Europeans have paid their dues for visa-free travel when they upheld the rights of US citizens to enter Europe without a visa. This is not a given and could be revoked at any time if the US does not honor its end of the bargain. Therefore, if the US wants access to European PNR data and national police databases, we should ask them what they are willing to pay for it. Visa-free travel is nothing "given in return" since Europeans already benefitted from this anyway on a strict basis of reciprocity. It would be more than urgent to finally know how much our data are actually worth to the US before we give them out for free. I'd even go further and would recommend that Europeans have at least a tiny little bit of self-esteem to dare retaliation against the US' blackmail. But, of course, we don't do any of this.
At the end of the day all I can therefore do is congratulate the United States of America for their bargaining talents which are truly amazing: By now you have made Europe paid not twice but thrice for the very same meal! (Or maybe it is just Europe's bargaining "un-talents" that are amazing?) I understand that terrorism must have caused some inflation in the price for visa-free travel, but I wonder nevertheless how the US can remain competitive: With all the other terrorism related security measures that you impose on EU citizens, the meal with inflated prices certainly doesn't taste any better... It actually tastes worse by the day, and personally, if I were in charge, I wouldn't be willing to pay for it: Thanks but no thanks. Let's all get a visa, Americans and Europeans alike, and we get to keep our data. Now we can negotiate!
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