Millions of people from around the world wish to visit the EU, many of them needing a visa.

Since 2009, applications for EU visas have risen from 10.2 million by 50% to 15.2 million in 2016. This shows that mobility is on the rise globally, not least also due to increasingly easier and cheaper travel opportunities. At the same time however, the geo-political environment has drastically changed in the last few decades, with new and rapidly evolving migration and security challenges. We need to draw the lessons from these developments, and upgrade our common EU visa policy accordingly – without making legitimate travel complicated.

In this era of global mobility, we want to facilitate travel for those coming to the EU for tourism, business or family reasons. This is why we propose now to make it possible to apply for a visa longer in advance, to submit and sign a visa application form electronically, and to receive an answer more quickly by shortening the deadlines for decisions. To facilitate short tourism trips, we are introducing the possibility to issue visas at the external border under a special scheme on a temporary basis and under strict conditions. At the same time, trusted and regular travellers will be able to benefit from a harmonised “multiple entry visa” valid from one to up to five years.

In parallel, we need to become more effective at screening travellers, and detecting those who pose a threat. This is why we will in the near future upgrade the Visa Information System, the database used by consular officers in charge of assessing the visa applications. A consular officer should in the future be able to immediately detect if an applicant is subject to an entry ban, has fraudulent documents, or is flagged as wanted for criminal or terrorist activities for example.

To ensure a more efficient and faster processing of more and more visa applications, we propose to increase the visa fee from €60 to €80 EUR. This is still less than what many tourist destinations elsewhere in the world charge, but it will give EU Member States an additional 205 million EUR every year to ensure consular support worldwide.

Finally, the EU‘s visa policy should play a more effective role in our overall cooperation with third countries, particularly on migration management. Many Member States have difficulties today in returning apprehended irregular migrants to their countries of origin due to the lack of cooperation by the authorities in those countries on readmission. At the same time, a certain part of irregular migrants that are to be returned have in fact entered the EU legally by obtaining visas which they overstayed. For this reason, we propose to establish stricter conditions for processing visas in cases where a third country does not cooperate satisfactorily on readmission.

In an increasingly mobile and globalised world, a fairer, more transparent, and more secure visa policy is in the shared interest of the EU as well as our partner countries and their citizens wishing to travel to the EU. A future-proof EU visa-policy is fundamental for an open and secure EU.