{"id":71079,"date":"2025-05-03T11:59:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-03T11:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/71079\/"},"modified":"2025-05-03T11:59:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T11:59:09","slug":"romania-taken-off-us-visa-free-travel-list-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/71079\/","title":{"rendered":"Romania taken off US visa-free travel list\u00a0 \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The announcement comes two days before the first round of Romania\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/romania-elections-watch-politics-vote-europe-president-sunday\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/romania-elections-watch-politics-vote-europe-president-sunday\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">re-do presidential election<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>U.S. Vice President JD Vance criticized Romania in February for canceling last year\u2019s presidential round over allegations of illegal campaigning and Russian interference after little-known ultranationalist C\u0103lin Georgescu won the first round.<\/p>\n<p>While the DHS did not tie Romania\u2019s visa waiver removal to the canceled election, some perceived it as such. Hard-right presidential candidate George Simion, who has styled himself as a Trumpist, predicted that the visa requirement for Romanians to travel to the U.S. will be withdrawn again soon, \u201cas soon as we go back to democracy.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Simion, who\u00a0is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/george-simion-romania-presidential-election-crin-antonescu-nicusor-dan-victor-ponta-elena-lasconi\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">expected to win<\/a> the first round of the do-over vote on Sunday, was in Washington last month, where he <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/dlippman\/status\/1914423560694620450\" target=\"_blank\">met with DHS officials<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>The DHS said Romania \u201cmay be reconsidered\u201d for the visa waiver program \u201cin the future should they meet the statutory eligibility criteria,\u201d according to its statement.<\/p>\n<p>The Romanian foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday that it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mae.ro\/node\/66715\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">regrets the U.S. decision<\/a>, given that Romania complies with all the requirements for its citizens to be able to travel to the U.S. without a visa. Those include having low visa refusal rates, issuing electronic passports that are machine-readable, and increasing counterterrorism, law enforcement and immigration enforcement cooperation with the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The announcement comes two days before the first round of Romania\u2019s re-do presidential election.\u00a0 U.S. Vice President JD&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[768,35562,6215,31,2438,32,33,7964,2816,33113,40,601,2003,1438,35563,35564,811,6717,1771,1772,49,978,659,6863],"class_list":{"0":"post-71079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-borders","9":"tag-calin-georgescu","10":"tag-cooperation","11":"tag-democracy","12":"tag-department","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-elections","15":"tag-enforcement","16":"tag-european-politics","17":"tag-george-simion","18":"tag-immigration","19":"tag-jd-vance","20":"tag-law-enforcement","21":"tag-romania","22":"tag-romanian-election-2025","23":"tag-romanian-politics","24":"tag-security","25":"tag-transatlantic-relations","26":"tag-u-s-foreign-policy","27":"tag-u-s-politics","28":"tag-united-states","29":"tag-us","30":"tag-usa","31":"tag-visas"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114443790954859867","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}