El régimen jurídico de la política de visados de la Unión Europea

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to analyze the origins and development of the EU visa policy in order to determine the course of evolution of a legal area of shared competence between the EU and its Member States.Within the framework of intergovernmental cooperation, a group of European States willing to establish an effective single market created a common visa policy with the aims of removing obstacles to free movement in their territories. Among the existing barriers to free movement, border controls were predominant. The elimination of these border controls in the common frontiers relied on political coordination on the management of the external borders of the participating European States. One of the most significant initiatives in this sense was the setting up of a uniform visa that could enable its holder to free movement. Thus, the uniform visa designed as a compensatory measure to free movement materialized in two international treaties whose regulations, along with other specific rules, gave rise to a very ample and complex Schengen legal area...