On 29 January, the Commission adopted its first-ever EU Visa Strategy, setting out a framework for a visa policy that advances the EU’s long-term interests. It makes visa policy more strategic and better equipped to respond to growing mobility, regional instability, and geopolitical competition.
The Strategy aims to:
- strengthen the security of the Schengen area;
- support economic growth and competitiveness;
- advance the EU’s strategic interests, values and global standing in the world.
Alongside the Strategy, the Commission also adopted a Recommendation on attracting talent for innovation, to make the EU more attractive to highly skilled professionals, students, researchers and innovative entrepreneurs and to support the EU’s competitiveness in a global context.
Key pillars
The Visa Strategy is built on 3 key pillars:
Strengthening the EU’s security
This includes:
- A modern system for granting visa-free status to partner countries
- Stronger monitoring of existing visa-free regimes
- Stronger visa leverages
- Possible targeted restrictive visa measures
- New measures to strengthen travel document security
Boosting competitiveness
The strategy puts forward new measures to support the EU’s global competitiveness, attract talent, and make legitimate travel easier, faster and more predictable for tourists and business travellers, including:
- New digital procedures for both visa-free and visa required travellers: ETIAS will simplify and partly automate pre-departure checks for visa-free travellers, as of Q4 2026.
- Multiple entry visas with a longer validity for trusted travellers.
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Better conditions for talent
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Additional support to non-EU nationals and employers to address challenges related to the visa process through the European Legal Gateway Offices
- Additional EU funding to support visa processing for highly skilled non-EU nationals
Modern visa tools
The EU is deploying advanced digital tools to modernise visa and border management. The EU’s IT systems will be interoperable by 2028, making it possible to query multiple databases at once and through a single, central search, improving information-sharing and preventing visa abuse.
Recommendation on attracting talent for innovation
Recommendation complements the Visa Strategy setting out concrete ways in which Member States can make the EU more attractive for students, researchers and highly skilled workers, startup founders and innovative entrepreneurs in key sectors for the EU’s competitiveness and strategic autonomy.
Recommendation encourage Member States to have simpler and faster procedures for long-stay visa and residence permits through more digitised processes, fewer documents and shorter processing times, easier transitions to work or entrepreneurship from study or research in the EU, improved intra-EU mobility as well as better access to information and stronger coordination between Member States’ authorities, universities, and research organisations.