Castries, Saint Lucia: Prime Minister Philip J Pierre visited Brussels in Belgium to engage in discussions with the European Commission and European Parliament regarding international migration matters. The visit started on April 7 and will run through April 12, 2024.
The agenda of the meeting is to exchange talks on the changes, proposed to the Schengen Visa-Free Regime and the its impacts on other countries, which have an investor citizenship programmes like Saint Lucia.
Under the leadership of PM Pierre, the Citizenship by Investment programme has achieved heights of success due to its rigid and robust due diligence processes. The leader of Saint Lucia has initially planned to visit Brussels to sign the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with other OECS countries, who have similar citizenship programmes.
However, the prime minister will now hold discussions on the position of Saint Lucia on the MOA and also talk about the measures that can be taken by all the countries to strengthen their citizenship-by-investment programmes.
Notably, in the absence of PM Pierre, the Deputy Prime Minister of Saint Lucia as well as the Minister for Tourism, Ernest Hilaire will act as a Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Economic Development, Youth Economy, and Minister for Justice and National Security.
Ambassadors of the EU Member States (Coreper) have agreed their position on a draft regulation, updating the mechanism to allow the EU to suspend visa-free travel for third countries whose citizens are spared from the visa obligation when they travel to the Schengen area.
The European Union will give the following new grounds to suspend visa-free regime.
- Lack of partnership of a visa-free between third country with EU visa policy, where this might lead to an increase in the arrivals to the EU, for example due to the country’s geographical area to the EU
- Operation of an investor citizenship scheme, under which citizenship is granted in return for a pre-determined payment or investment, without any genuine connection to the third country concerned
- Deficiencies and threats in document security legislation or its procedure
