Waiver of the Schengen visa, the Ecuadorian dream that collapses

Citizens of Ecuador and Bolivia are the only South Americans who need to apply for a Schengen visa. As the international scene is, this will not change anytime soon.

The hopes of Ecuadorians to be able to travel freely to the European Union, without requiring a Schengen visa, disappear. Presidents Lenín Moreno and Guillermo Lasso offered to achieve what Rafael Correa truncated in 2009, but it has not been possible.

Although President Lasso came very close to achieving it, now the Schengen visa waiver is limited to a “possibility”, surrounded by good intentions, but without specific commitments or deadlines.

The last try.

The President exhausted his last cartridges on his recent trip to Brussels, where on July 17, 2023 he signed a memorandum of understanding that seeks to strengthen bilateral relations between the European Union and Ecuador.

The document had been worked on for almost a year, long before the impeachment trial against Lasso and the extraordinary elections were anticipated. And its objective is to institutionalize cooperation between both parties.

The intention, as reflected in the content itself, is to protect the lines of mutual work from political, regional and international fluctuations. In Europe, for example, the turn to the right and in Latin America, to the left.

It is an agreement that is not tailor-made for any government, but rather for the cooperation between the EU and Ecuador to be maintained, according to some European ambassadors. The memorandum seeks to strengthen “stronger and closer cooperation.”

There it is highlighted that both parties “share the intention (…) to work on the development (…) of a possible visa exemption agreement for short stays.” But in the end it is noted that the document does not create rights or obligations for those involved.

In addition, the exemption does not fall within the “essential priorities” of the memorandum that contains eight topics: environmental, economic and social, scientific and educational, development, security, Venezuelan migration, investment and multilateral cooperation.

But it does appear on the list of 14 areas of cooperation to intensify and expand, by addressing the priorities. This, despite the recent optimism of Foreign Minister Gustavo Manrique, dampens the hopes that the Schengen visa exemption will become a reality in the short or medium term.

Added to this is the fact that Ecuadorians have broken records for submitting false or dubious documents in their visa applications. 2022 closed with a 22% rate of rejection of applications.

Ecuador is not a priority.

In addition, Europe’s priorities are different, so those who know about the matter do not believe that the exemption for Ecuador will be taken up again in the European Parliament.

The old continent is struggling not only with the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, such as the energy and migration crisis, but also with the waves of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa that continue to arrive by land and sea. As well as with the consequences of climate change.

Ecuador was left out of the exemption that Colombia and Peru received by decision of the then government of Rafael Correa, in June 2009. The former president preferred to work on an individual commercial agreement. While the neighboring countries, which signed the multi-party agreement, received the benefit in June 2015.

That made Ecuador, along with Bolivia, the second Spanish-speaking country in South America whose citizens need to apply for a visa to travel to Europe.