nam 22 uu 4500 10.17176/20230912-100807-0 DE-Verfassungsblog cr||||| 230912s2023||||xx#|||||o|||| ||| 0|eng|| 10.17176/20230912-100807-0 doi eng 342 23 Bornemann, Jonas Author aut The Price of Transatlantic Friendship - Visa- Reciprocity and EU Citizenship at the CJEU Bornemann, Jonas Verfassungsblog 2023-09-12 Text txt rdacontent Computermedien c rdamedia Online-Ressource cr rdacarrier While the citizens of most EU Member States enjoy visa-free travel to the US, citizens of Bulgaria, Romania and Cyprus do not. Following the Commission’s repeated refusal to activate the reciprocity mechanism in EU visa law to remedy this inequality in access to visa-free travel, the European Parliament asked the CJEU whether the Commission was under an obligation to do so. The Court answered in the negative, holding instead that the Commission had wide discretion in this regard. Its reasoning centers the sensitive political nature that visa retaliation vis-á-vis the US implies, while failing to instill a sense of urgency in working towards equal treatment of EU citizens. This threatens to perpetuate a situation in which the advantages of supranational integration in the context of the Schengen acquis are permanently withheld from nationals of Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus. CC BY-SA 4.0 CJEU EU citizenship EU Commission EU Parliament Schengen acquis Visa Max Steinbeis Verfassungsblog gGmbH Verfassungsblog 2366-7044 https://verfassungsblog.de/the-price-of-transatlantic-friendships/ raw object