I will indeed, Chair, thank you very much.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's a great pleasure to be here. Perhaps a word of explanation of who I am, what I do, and why I'm here would be helpful.
I am director general of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security. Those obviously are very fine aspirations, and we try every day to bring them to life in the 25 member states of the European Union. What we do essentially covers what in our member states are dealt with by ministries of justice and ministries of the interior; I'm not quite sure what the equivalent would be here. This ranges from immigration, asylum, and border issues to the fight against organized crime, the fight against terrorism, the protection and promotion of fundamental rights, civil law, family law questions, and criminal law questions more generally.
The European Union, as you all know, is made up of 25 countries, very soon to be 27, and who knows how many more after that in the immediate or medium term.
We have some direct responsibilities under common policies and under the common legal system of the European Union. Most relevant, I think, for my visit to Canada is the set of issues around borders, visas, asylum, the way in which we manage access to our territory, and the rights of our citizens to travel within our borders and internationally.
With me today is Eric Hayes, our ambassador, the head of the European Union's delegation to Canada; Chris Kendall, who works in our delegation in Ottawa, which is a few metres down the road; and Joannes de Ceuster, who is the head of the borders and visas unit in my directorate-general in Brussels.
I have to say that our relations with Canada are extremely well established, very friendly and very cooperative. There is very little we disagree on. However, the main purpose of my visit here is to discuss an area of some concern in the relations between the European Union and Canada. This concerns the visa regime that we apply to you and you apply to us.
I think the custom in this great Parliament is to use both of the national languages of Canada. We do this sort of thing in Brussels as well, so if you will permit me, I'll say a few words in French.
The problem with visas stems from the fact that we have two different legal systems: the Canadian system on the one hand, and the European system on the other. The Canadian system is one that you are familiar with. The European system is based on the notion of the European community. Our members States form one single union and we have a common policy on visas. On the international level, the policy is based on reciprocity, in the sense that our law requires us to demand visas from citizens of countries that require the same from our citizens, and to not demand visas from countries that do not.
As you know, reciprocity cannot be attained overnight. For some time, we have been working with asymmetrical situations, wherein certain countries require visas from some of our countries, even though we do not retaliate by demanding mandatory visas from citizens of those countries.
For some time, the European Union has been expanding. Today, we have 25 states, tomorrow, we will perhaps have 27. The largest expansion took place in 2004, with the membership of 10 new countries. These were mostly countries from Eastern Europe, or Central Europe, but also included two Mediterranean islands, Malta and Cyprus.
These countries, by joining the European Union, adopt what we call our corpus, a somewhat fancy word. What is our corpus? It is our legislation. It is everything we have done since the European Union was created in the early 1950s. The countries integrate the whole of European laws, obligations, duties, and rights into their national legislation. By doing so, they also embrace the principle of reciprocity, and these countries' citizens expect Europe to grant them access without a visa to countries for which we allow access to European Union countries without a visa.
As I was saying, it is a process. Reciprocity does not occur overnight. Therefore, for some time, we have been holding discussions with a few countries, including Canada, with a view to attaining reciprocity in the foreseeable future.
We have similar but not identical problems with the United States, Brazil, certain Latin American countries and other countries throughout the world.
In January, we issued a European Commission report to our Parliament and to our council of ministers, to track the progress, or lack thereof, in different countries with which we have not concluded reciprocity agreements. That report announced another report to be published six months later, which takes us to about now. When we go back to Europe this weekend, we will be putting the finishing touches on the report, which will be published in early July.
And so I came here—I was also in Washington—to meet with our partners and talk about what has been done, what can be done with respect to access to the countries concerned, without the requirement of a visa. I will remind you that Canadians have access to all European countries without a visa. You simply arrive at our borders and present your passport.
As you know, that is not the case here. Some of our countries, for example, mine and Joannes de Ceuster's... Yes, we happen to be citizens of Belgium and the United Kingdom, but citizens from some of our new partners, 7 out of 25 countries, are still required to present a visa upon entering Canada. These countries are essentially Central and Eastern European countries, or Baltic republics.
These countries have re-established democracy after many years of dictatorship and occupation, have joined NATO, the European Union, and to be very clear with you, do not quite understand why they are not being treated the same way as their fellow European citizens from the longer-standing Union member countries.
We tell them to be patient. We tell them that reciprocity cannot be obtained overnight. It is a process. Certain criteria must be met. We say that like them, we are in the midst of bilateral discussions with you, the Canadian authorities, with a view to obtaining equal reciprocal treatment.
For them, the criteria are not always clear or transparent. Nonetheless, we have all understood that it is important for these countries to convince you, your government, and your authorities that they respect all laws, criteria, and necessary standards to allow them to dispense with visas.
You must understand that the obligation is particularly onerous in countries where there is no Canadian consulate, no Canadian embassy to issue a visa. For example, in Estonia... I know that you do not have the resources to set up a very vast network of consulates, of embassies throughout the world. Estonians must travel to Warsaw. Estonia is not very close to Warsaw. It complicates the lives of people who believe themselves to be full-fledged citizens of the world, of the European Union, of NATO, and what we used to and still refer to as the Western world.
Therefore, I came here to speak honestly about these issues with your authorities. We must produce a report upon our return to Brussels. Under the legislation that mandates our report, we must state what measures must be taken to establish or re-establish reciprocity if progress has not been made. In all honesty, if I'm unable to leave Canada after tomorrow night without the ability to write in our report that there is indeed a possibility, a hope, progress, then we will most likely have to consider other measures. We will be put under considerable pressure from the concerned member states, as well as other countries that stand in solidarity with their partners, to do something reciprocal for everyone.
It is therefore not impossible... This is not a threat. I did not come here... I'm not a pessimist, that is not my style, I do not threaten anyone. I strongly hope to leave after tomorrow with something useful in my pocket, in my head, and if that is not the case, we will have to consider other measures, and among those measures, we may have to consider requiring a visa from certain categories of Canadian passport holders, such as diplomatic or duty passport holders. That is not certain but the possibility is there.
I will go back to my mother tongue, having tortured you with my French.
I didn't torture you? Thank you.
This is the situation. We hope to leave here with some good news. This is a process. We don't expect overnight results. But we are now two years into the new Europe, with 25 members. Our rules are based on reciprocity. Yours are not. I understand that. Our rules are based on a collective vision of the European Union as 25 countries, but with a common European citizenship that grants certain rights and carries with it certain obligations. Yours aren't. You look at each of our countries individually.
We have very good EU-Canada relations, thanks in part to our excellent ambassador here and thanks to the efforts of many of you and to your people in Brussels as well. So you understand the European Union. You know what we are; you know what we're not.
But one of the things we are is a group of countries with a set of common rules and polices and hopes, and to a certain extent a common citizenship. One of the features of the common citizenship is that we have a common visa regime with foreign countries, which should ultimately, soon we hope, be based on relations of reciprocity. It's not everywhere. It's getting better in most places. It hasn't gotten much better in Canada up to now. I'm here in the hope that it soon will.
Thank you.