ZAGREB, October 5, 2019 – The United States has lifted visa requirements for Poles, President Trump announced on Friday, and now only four more EU countries, including Croatia, need visas for travel to the US.
Trump announced on Friday that Poland has officially been admitted to the US Visa Waiver Program (VWP).
Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Romania are the only remaining EU member states that do not enjoy the principle of reciprocity between the European Union and the United States and their citizens are at a disadvantage compared with citizens of other EU member states.
Brussels has tried to speed up the resolution of this issue, but these countries must first meet the basic criterion and reduce the visa refusal rate to less than three percent. In the case of Croatia, although this rate has been on the decline, it still stood at 5.1 percent in 2017.
In recent years Croatia and Cyprus have been mentioned as positive examples, close to meeting the formal criteria for visa waiver, but only Poland was now allowed into the VWP.
Although the European Commission was supposed to introduce visa requirements for citizens of the US and Canada by 12 April 2016 because they did not lift visas for all EU citizens, it eventually did not do so.
More news about relations between Croatia and the United States can be found in the Politics section.
