Premium
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) intends to launch a public communication campaign on the conditions that Romanian citizens must meet in order to enter the territory of the United States of America, aimed at reducing the refusal rate, Minister Bogdan Aurescu told on Wednesday private television broadcaster Digi24.
He mentioned that Romania will not be able to enter the Visa Waiver Program, which allows citizens of certain countries to travel without a visa to the United States for tourism or business for a limited period, as long as the rejection rate of the applications stays at over 3 percent.
"The Visa Waiver Program is regulated by U.S. Congress legislation, it provides for a 3 percent ceiling of the refusal rate on visa applications for six-month short-term visas in the United States. We are not yet at this 3 percent ceiling, we are at around 9-10 percent (...) We must therefore continue to make efforts to raise public awareness for Romanian citizens, when they apply for a visa to know if they have a chance to obtain this visa. Otherwise we risk remaining at this ceiling or not progressing fast enough to reach 3 percent," Aurescu specified.
According to the minister, the public information campaign will start "from the concrete elements of the visa refusal".
"What we are looking for in the next period is to launch a public information campaign, starting from the concrete elements of the refusal, and this is what I discussed in my recent telephone conversation with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, to review together what the reasons for the refusal are. The moment we have a discussion on the reasons for the refusal, then we will be able to focus this public campaign on exactly those elements that make us stay at such a high ceiling at the moment, far from the 3 percent ceiling that introduces us to the Visa Waiver. Apart from that, other conditions related to the Romanian authorities have been met," said the foreign minister.
