Europese Commissie is er niet in geslaagd EU-lidstaten ervan te weerhouden te tekenen voor een visumvrije toegang tot Amerika (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has failed to prevent EU capitals, hopeful of visa-free access to the US, from signing bilateral deals with Washington. But it wants a seat at the negotiating table while the political agreement is translated into practical arrangements.
"It is now extremely important to check how the memorandum will be translated into implementing measures (...) that is when we can say whether the given member state is going beyond boundaries set by EU legislation", EU home affairs commissioner Franco Frattini said on Thursday (28 February).
Mr Frattini was speaking after meeting all 27 EU interior ministers.
The talks were designed to find a common EU response to US travel security demands in the face of an American-Czech memorandum of understanding, an agreement believed to secure visa-free travel for Czech citizens to the United States.
Five other countries - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary and Slovakia - are expected to follow suit in the near future.
"We all agreed that we needed a common approach", Slovenian interior minister Dragutin Mate, representing his country's EU presidency, told journalists and set a 13 March deadline for the agreements. That is when EU-US talks on justice and home affairs dossier will be held in Slovenia.
"Those member states already negotiating will slightly slow down the pace" until the March meeting, Mr Mate added.
In addition, the European Commission was assigned to table an analysis establishing a line between what falls within the union's competence and what member states' powers are in the current talks.
Thursday's press conferences revealed a clear difference of opinion regarding several key elements, including the memorandum's cornerstone, an electronic travel authorisation system (ETA).
The system is designed to collect data electronically, seen in Washington as "necessary" to determine whether there are security risks in permitting a certain citizen to travel to the US.
According to commissioner Frattini, the authorisation system "is a visa-related issue" and falls under "exclusive" EU competence. "We cannot tolerate any violation of European legislation", he warned.
The Czech Republic, on the other hand, has claimed the opposite, with the country's interior minister Ivan Langer saying "we have followed our own path, but at the same time respected the EU's obligations".
Mr Langer added that "there are always three different views when two lawyers meet", referring to the fact that he and Mr Frattini are both former lawyers.
Despite the legal wrangling, the commissioner has ruled out immediate legal action against Prague, citing the fact that the US-Czech memorandum took on board almost all of Brussels' objections.
The document states that: "Nothing in this Memorandum of Understanding is to be interpreted to affect the rights and obligations of the Participants as prescribed ... by their participation in international treaties and agreements, including obligations arising from the membership of the Czech Republic in the European Union".