mfkne

Well, ESTA is a de-facto visa, albeit fairly easy to obtain and fairly affordable too, yet it's still a visa, wich is weird considering you're not supposed to need a visa if you're from a VWP country.

Ber2dca

I doubt it has anything to do with the Cold War or else places like Czech Republic would also be on the list. The reason is likely found in the very strong tendency for Poles to seek work outside Poland. It's against the conditions of admission and thus against the law to work when admitted as a tourist.

The authorities likely find that even now a significant % of Polish people applying for tourist visas for the U.S. are actually trying to work in the US. I think if Brexit means that Poles find it harder to work in the UK, there will be an even bigger push for Poles to go work in the US.

GUWonder

The US VWP is a carrot and a stick used by the US Government.

For example, we use the US VWP to try to make countries agree to allow us to get armed FAMs on flights to/from those countries, revise their passport or even visa policies, and do other things. A lot of this is done in related negotiations and agreements that aren't public when a country is up for being added to, kept in, or removed from the US VWP.

hfly

GU, you are right that they can use it for these things, however some of these things actually things that are better for the countries themselves as well as anyone else. Some Belgian citizens for awhile lost their VWP statsus. Why because Not only was Belgium years behind on instituting some Passport changes that the US and all the other Eu countries had agreed on, but because of the screwed up local system(s) in Belgium passports were in essence issued by every single police station and court house in the country,m not to mention many post offices and even libraries, which meant that when thousands of blanks went missing, not only did they not know how many, but not even the document numbers involved.

Regarding the 5 that we are talking about, none bar Poland have direct flights to the US with US carriers so that is not an issue with FAM's.

Again, as I said on the other thread, 4 out of the 5 are already on the road map, and in the very unlikely event that the commission tries to push this, it will weaken the Eu as the original 12, which includes all the major members are not going to risk visa free travel for their citizens on behalf of the Poles or the Romanians, especially with how contentious this same subject is in Spain, France, Italy and Germany.

One last mention to those above who say that an ESTA is "just like a visa". Have you people ever applied for a real visa? To the US for example? There is a lot of documents to be prepared,forms to fill out, interview(s) to be done, real money to be paid, days or weeks to wait. My wife's last Esta took me under 60 secs to obtain, from the comfort of home. Yes, $14. So what.

Maluku_Flyer

Hmmmm.

Interesting perspective.
Fewer US tourists travel to the EU -> EU loses.
Fewer EU tourists travel to the US -> EU loses again.

Are you assuming that US travellers are too dense to fill out an equivalent of an ESTA form online? The current fee is US $14. How many US tourists wouldn't pay a fee of 10-15 EUros in the other direction?

catocony

Poles, Bulgarians, Romanians, Croats and Cypriots do not fill out an ESTA. They do a full visa app. If the CTA and/or Schengen countries were to implement something like an ESTA for US passport holders, with the same general requirements and costs, that would be one thing. But again, the issue is adding five sovereign nations to the US program. That is not the same as implementing and ESTA.

A corollary to my argument would be that CTA and/or Schengen creating an ESTA equivalent for US passport holders won't get the five EU members added to the US VWP. It might decrease US tourism a bit, it won't increase it.

I would enjoy the fight over how Schengen members would split the fee. Evenly across all countries? Give it all to the initial country of entry? If the EU were to implement something, the debate on that issue would take six months.

susiesan

I have a cruise planned for October, Barcelona to Venice. I will visit Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Montenegro, Croatia, and Slovenia. How may visas would I need? If it ended up being more than one I would cancel the trip. This would become way too complicated and expensive if I had to get a bunch of visas for one Europe vist.

seawolf

Nothing's changing by October for reasons stated above. You pass a non-binding resolution when you want to show your constituents are standing up for something when you know it ain't going to happen.

susiesan

You are likely right on timing, but theoretically for a cruise like mine how would this work? Since I am flying into BCN would Spain get the fee? Since Montenegro is not in the EU what impact would this have? Would cruises stop going to Kotor? Talk about a cluster <deleted>.

GUWonder

There is no fee if you are using a US passport and playing tourist in the EU countries/Iceland/Norway/Switzerland/Liechtenstein. And same goes for visiting Montenegro as a tourist on a US passport IIRC.

FlyIgglesFly

This is correct.

hfly

Susie, assuming you have a US passport you will have no problems.

Landscaper

I have often wondered how foreign governments can control the US visa refusal rates of its citizens... the only way I see this working is if the foreign government prescreens its citizens before they enter the US consular section for interviews?

catocony

What I saw in Brasil was a general sense that non-rich people couldn't get tourist visas. That's why Brasil got pretty close to the 3% rate a few years ago. Their economy was doing fine, you could actually make some money there, and there were all kinds of press reports about how much of a waste of time it was for your average person to apply for a visa. Making the visa appointments in-person cut down on a lot of apps, since Brasil is about the size of the continental US and there were only 5-6 US consulates there.

Now that their economy has cratered, more people are applying, and the rate has gone up.

Maluku_Flyer

No, they would fight over who gets to develop the system and who gets to host it. Distribution of funds is probably a moot point, doubt it'll be a tremendously profitable enterprise.

That some sort of E-TA system will be implemented at some point in the not too distant future is a near certainty, though. But definitely not in 2017 or 2018. And whether or not the US expands the VWP to Bulgaria will have nothing to do with it.