The European Commission has been threatening retaliation since last fall if the government of Canada doesn’t move to lift travel visa requirements for Bulgaria and Romania, but the restrictions remain in place.

The European Union (EU) says Canada is dragging its heels on the issue, but Danielle Norris, a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, insists that the government is doing all it can to ensure the restrictions are removed as quickly as possible.

“Visa requirements are always made based on certain criteria, and while these decisions involve extensive consultation with the key federal departments, it’s important that we’re quickly moving forward on lifting these types of restrictions for all EU countries,” she says.

Not fast enough for Bulgaria and Romania.

Emilia Stefanova, a counseller with the Bulgarian Embassy in Ottawa, declined a telephone interview until after the matter was resolved, but she would say in an e-mail that the Canadian government’s continual postponement of the consultation process is disappointing for Bulgaria.  “This is a sensitive issue for both countries,” she says.

The European executive called on Canada last September to allow at least one more EU country to enjoy visa free travel by the end of the year and to show progress in abolishing the visa regime for all the other new member states in the first half of 2008.

Canada responded by granting Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and Slovakia, visa free status in March, but observers say the EU won’t be fully satisfied until all its members enjoy free movement to and from Canada.

“Simply put, this is a case of new members getting the same treatment as old members,” says Robert Gould, the associate director for the Centre of European Studies at Carleton University. “This is seen by Brussels as an irritant for Canada-EU relations because Canada is discriminating between different EU member states and the principle of the EU is that all member states should be treated equally,” Gould says.

These two countries aren’t receiving equal treatment within the EU either. One of the other main principles of EU membership is the free movement of labour and people within the EU, but Gould says this hasn’t been fully realized in the case of Bulgaria and Romania because they only joined in 2007.

Meanwhile, Canada has its other issues with lifting the visas.

Romanian countryside. Photo Courtesy of Tyler Tate

Since lifting restrictions on the Czech Republic last November, there has been a rising number of Roma, colloquially known as gypsies, visiting from that country and seeking asylum in Canada, as they often face social isolation and discrimination at home.            

This past January alone, 45 claims for asylum were filed from mainly Roma Czech visitors, up from zero two years before. Many of the new central and eastern EU member states have large Roma populations, including Romania and Bulgaria.

Canada acting cautiously

Gould says the government of Canada is acting cautiously because lifting visa requirements could cause a repeat of the influx of thousands of Roma Czechs in 1996, when travel restrictions were lifted for a short period. The flood of asylum seekers who came to Canada as a result of the last time visas were eliminated forced the government to reinstate the restrictions within a year.

Critics of the visa free policy argue that because of this precedent, the government should be cautious about going along with the visa free immigration plan just to appease the EU. Julie Taub, a barrister and solicitor at an Ottawa immigration law office, says that Citizenship and Immigration Canada has to make these kinds of decisions on a country-by-country basis and not simply because of political pressure.

“Otherwise, millions of foreign nationals would flee their home countries to seek asylum or remain illegally in Canada for decades on end, all at the Canadian taxpayers’ expense,” she says. Because Canada has some of the most generous benefits in the world for asylum seekers, even for those who are in Canada illegally, Taub says there are significant dangers in granting visa-free travel to any country that wants it.

Opposition to the policy is not completely unfounded according to Gould, whose research has focused mainly on the political rhetoric of immigration issues in the EU. He says the perception of the EU’s free mobility principle has also worried other countries because of its potential implications outside the union.

“So what is perceived as a difficult situation in terms of migration… [is] the presence and movement of persons outside the European Union,” Gould says. 

Canada’s immigration authority is distancing itself from these kinds of concerns. Norris says the perceived delays for Bulgaria and Romania are in fact normal because they were the last two states to join the EU.

Business and trade route

“Eventually, we are hoping that all EU states will be visa free as soon as possible to promote a free movement between the two areas,” she says. “We are committed to a free and secure movement of people between the EU and Canada.”

Travel restrictions are just one aspect of the immigration relationship between the EU and Canada though, as much of the movement between the two areas is related to business and trade.

Phil Cappelle, a lawyer with Cappelle-Kane Immigration Lawyers in Ottawa, says EU citizens who cannot travel to Canada without a visa might choose the business route because the processing times for visa applications from within the EU are so long.

“It is usually more effective for those individuals coming from the EU to come here on a temporary basis first, with for example a work permit, and then apply from within Canada, which gives them access to processing offices that go faster than if they were waiting to have their application processed in London, Paris or Bucharest,” Cappelle says.

This means for Bulgarians and Romanians who are eager to travel to Canada with hopes of staying longer, a work permit might be an effective alternative while the travel visas remain in effect. The only problem with these permits is that the wait times to obtain one in the EU are becoming almost as significant as for visa applications; Bucharest is currently processing at 53 months per application.

Bulgarian and Romanian representatives in Canada are reluctant to take a political position on the issue because it is still under review, but Stefanova says they are optimistic that the visas will be eliminated soon. “Being EU members, there are not any objective reasons for these countries to be treated by Canada in a different manner,” she says.

Gould points out that lifting of the visas would not only be in line with the EU principle of equal treatment for its members, but it would also remove this growing point of tension in the Canada-EU relationship. The EU Commission has threatened reprisal if Canada’s visa restrictions aren’t removed for all its members, but Gould says so far it is unclear exactly what kind of retaliation Canada will face.

“The free movement of people between Canada and the EU is also considered an irritant because the EU countries do not require visas of Canadians who want to visit EU members, so there is an asymmetry as well,” he says.

Presenting the visas as a trade-off problem misses the point for the policy’s critics. Taub argues that the policy should be changed only if it is found to be in the best interests of Canada and not based on the broader context of the Canada-EU relationship. “According to international law and custom, each country has the inalienable right to determine who may enter its territory,” Taub says.

Canada determines a country’s visa status based on its socio-economic profile, immigration reputation, border security, human rights record as well as several other bilateral considerations.

Norris says other government departments, such as the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, are involved in the visa review process to ensure a broad range of perspectives are considered when a decision is taken to change any country’s requirements.

She says the review for the European visa restrictions usually begins with a technical visit to the country in question by representatives from the government of Canada to meet with experts from the EU.

Bulgaria and Romania’s visit was supposed to take place earlier this year, but has since been pushed back until the end of April.

The review process takes a little over a year to complete according to Norris, which means that Bulgarians and Romanians wishing to visit Canada visa-free, will have to wait patiently until at least next spring.