Visa-free travel of US citizens to Europe receives a setback in the European Parliament

Brussels : US President Donald Trump and his policies have been criticized by the Europeans, and they have yet once again managed to shock the US. Going forward, “Visa” will be compulsory for all US citizens, who are travelling in European countries. In the European Parliament session, the resolution of ‘cancelling the “Visa-free” facility of US citizens while travelling in Europe’ has been approved. Thus this cancellation resolution is considered to be an “Anti-Trump” policy undertaken by the European Union (EU).

According to the US and EU agreement, the citizens from both the sides were awarded with the facility of “Visa-free” travel. But it was revealed that since the last three years, US has not been granting this facility to the citizens of some of the European nations. The concerned European nations were Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Cypress. However, there was no immediate action taken against the US.

There has been some indication that after Donald Trump’s election as the US President, a certain tension has arisen between US and Europe. NATO, “Brexit”, Greece, Russia and immigration issues; these were some of the topics where Trump has opposed the EU. He has welcomed the “Brexit” move and claimed that other member nations of the European Union too will soon fall out of the Union. Trump’s role of opposing the refugees to enter US has been seen as a conflict of human values and he has been constantly criticized by the European leaders.

Given this background, the European Union has started to retaliate to Trump on various levels. The EU is trying to establish cooperation from countries like China, Canada and Japan to beat the US. In this context, cancellation of “Visa-free” travel to Europe by US citizens is considered to be a severe representational setback. Apart from the US; Australia, Japan and Canada too had violated their agreement with the EU, but there was never any action taken against them.

After coming to power, Trump had issued special executive orders to restrict the entry of citizens of seven countries to the US. This action caused a great deal of criticism for Trump on an international level. Even the European countries have expressed their resentment over this issue.