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Crackdown on US Travelers?

EU Considers Retaliatory Online Registration

In response to a new US security law that makes flying to America less convenient for Europeans, the EU is mulling a similar regulation. Visa-free travel may be replaced by a 'visa lite' regime among friendly nations.

Now that Washington has passed a law requiring visa-free passengers from Europe to answer questionnaires online before they board a plane for the United States, the European Union may set up a similar system of "electronic travel authorization" (ETA) for Americans coming to Europe.

"We are considering introducing this (system) here," Friso Roscam Abbing, a spokesman for EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini, said on Tuesday. "A final decision has not yet been taken."

He said the EU would investigate whether the security benefits of such a system would outweigh travel inconvenience.

The US law, which President George W. Bush approved last week, belongs to a wide-ranging security bill set in motion after the events of September 11. Travelers from countries which cooperate with the US in the visa-waiver program -- mostly Western European nations, including 15 of the 27 EU member states -- will be asked to register online and fill out questionnaires as many as two days before departure. The questions include trip itineraries and planned personal or professional meetings. The passengers will then need clearance from the US government before they board a plane.

Australia runs a similar online registration system for foreigners who don't need visas, said Roscam Abbing, which "seems to be working rather well."

US Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff told SPIEGEL in June that the planned registrations "would have a shelf life of some years," to make things easier for regular travelers. "It wouldn't be something you do every trip, you would do it periodically."

Chertoff told SPIEGEL that his office had nothing against a tit-for-tat registration requirement imposed on Americans flying to Europe. "It ought to be reciprocal," he said. "We are perfectly content to have Europe impose the same basic approach. I think that is fair."

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