Visa deal between Czech Republic and US could contravene EU law

12.00.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 11th Mar 2008

During yesterday's debate about the bilateral Memorandum of Understanding between the Czech Republic and the United States on visa-free entry for Czechs in exchange for meeting wide-ranging demands on information exchange on passengers, Liberal Democrat MEPs stressed that the European Union would lose credibility and influence by failing to act in unity.

Sarah Ludford (UK, Liberal Democrats), rapporteur on the Visa Information System stressed that the Czech Republic does not have the right to share information from VIS or other EU databases with the United States. She said:

"The deal between the Czech Republic and the United States breaches many aspects of EU law, especially on visa policy. Transfers of data from the Visa Information System or other EU databases to the United States would be illegal. It may be frustrating as well as ironic to be a Bush ally dying in Iraq but a suspected terrorist when desiring to travel to the US, but to fall for American divide-and-rule tactics can only hurt the whole EU including ultimately the Czech Republic."