EU court tells Britain to remove visa rule for non-EU citizens

The European Union’s supreme court told Britain on Thursday that it could no longer require entry visas in advance for non-EU citizens who are family members of EU citizens and hold a residence permit from another EU state.

Ruling in the case of Helena Patricia McCarthy Rodriguez, a Colombian married to a man with British and Irish citizenship living in Spain, the Court of Justice said EU rules did not allow London to insist on her applying in advance for an entry visa when she travelled from their home in Marbella to Britain.

There was no immediate response from the British government, which has made obtaining greater national control of migration from the rest of the EU a key objective as prime minister David Cameron seeks to review Britain's relationship with the bloc before a membership referendum he has promised to hold in 2017.

Mr Cameron will meet his fellow EU leaders at a summit in Brussels later on Thursday.

The court reviewed the case at the request of British judges to whom the family had complained that a requirement for Helena McCarthy to travel to the British consulate in Madrid every six months to renew a visa breached an EU directive granting free movement across the bloc for EU citizens and their families.

In a statement, the court said that Britain’s concern at levels of identity fraud did not give it the right to impose automatic requirements on individuals like McCarthy, where there was no suggestion of fraud or her marriage being a sham.

“National authorities are required to recognise, for the purposes of entry into their territory without a visa, a residence card issued ... by another member state, unless doubt is cast on the authenticity of that card and the correctness of the data appearing on it,” the Court of Justice said.

Reuters