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EU: Euro-visas

01 November 1993

The European Commission has put forward a list of 129 countries whose citizens will require visas to come to any EU country in future. Most of the 129 countries are in the Third World, and most of these in Africa. Visa controls have been the most effective mechanism for keeping out refugees from Europe, since refugees do not qualify for visas until they have left their own country, and once they have left they will be refused on the ground that they can stay where they are.

Visa controls are the only part of the K4 Committee's work which is under Community competence. The rest of its work on immigration and asylum is intergovernmental, a continuation of the work of the Ad Hoc Group on Immigration (AHI). K4's programme of action on asylum includes further work to implement the Dublin Convention and to prepare a parallel Dublin Convention for central and eastern European countries to sign (see Features in this issue), continuing discussion of common assessment of asylum-seekers' countries of origin and transit, and continued consideration of setting up a European system for electronic comparison of fingerprints (EURODAC). On immigration, it will work further on the resolutions on family reunification and on entry for employment approved by ministers on 1 June 1993, on further measures of monitoring and expulsion of non-EU nationals working or living illegally in the EU, and on improvement of training in detection of forged documents.

Work programme of Ad Hoc Group on Immigration, Confidential, SN 3675/WGI 1566, June 1993.