Europe travel: EU agrees on stricter rules for visiting Schengen area

The European Union member states’ ambassadors have tightened the rules for Europe visits and have agreed on a new rule that lets the EU stop visa-free travel for countries whose citizens don't need a visa to visit the Schengen area.

This law will help the EU deal with situations where visa-free travel is being misused or goes against EU interests.

New grounds to suspend visa-free regime

Under the updated mechanism, the EU will be given the following new grounds to suspend the visa-free regime:

• When a country outside the EU doesn't follow the same visa rules as the EU, and this leads to more people coming to the EU, especially because the country is close to the EU geographically.
• The operation of an investor citizenship scheme, whereby citizenship is granted without any genuine link to the third country concerned, in exchange for pre-determined payments or investments.
• Hybrid threats and deficiencies in document security legislation or procedures.