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Home > Court of Justice of the European Union Rules on Entry Requirements for Third-Country Nationals Entering the EU (September 4, 2014)

Court of Justice of the European Union Rules on Entry Requirements for Third-Country Nationals Entering the EU (September 4, 2014) [1]

Blog Name: 
International Law in Brief [2]
Author: 
Caitlin Behles

On September 4, 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union (the Court) ruled in Air Baltic Corporation AS v Valsts robežsardze [3] that third-country nationals may enter the territory of the European Union if they present a valid visa inside an invalid passport in addition to a valid passport.  According to the press release [4], the case concerned an individual who “presented a valid Indian passport without a visa and a cancelled Indian passport to which a valid uniform visa issued by Italy was affixed. The Indian citizen was refused entry into Latvia on the ground that he did not have a valid visa.”  In its decision, the Court held that “under the Visa Code, only the competent authorities of a Member State may annul a visa” and so the cancellation of a passport does not automatically cancel a visa inside it as well.  The Court also found “that Latvia was not justified in making the entry of third-country nationals subject to the condition that a valid visa must necessarily be affixed to a valid travel document. Member States do not have discretion allowing them to refuse foreign nationals entry on the basis of a condition that is not laid down in the Schengen Borders Code: accordingly, nothing in that code allows Member States to require additional entry conditions to be fulfilled, as the list of those conditions is exhaustive.”


Source URL: https://www.asil.org/blogs/court-justice-european-union-rules-entry-requirements-third-country-nationals-entering-eu

Links
[1] https://www.asil.org/blogs/court-justice-european-union-rules-entry-requirements-third-country-nationals-entering-eu
[2] https://www.asil.org/blog-name/international-law-brief
[3] http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=157346&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=552802
[4] http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2014-09/cp140114en.pdf