The Council of the EU decided Monday to suspend certain visa provisions for Ethiopian nationals because of the Ethiopian government’s “insufficient cooperation” regarding the readmission of Ethiopian nationals.

The Council stated that it will suspend the application of provisions referred to in article 25a(5) of the EU’s Visa Code, a European regulation that sets out conditions and procedures for issuing short-stay visas to foreign visitors of one of the EU’s member states in addition to the rules regarding airports transit visas.

According to these restrictions, EU countries will stop issuing multiple entry visas for Ethiopian nationals and will no longer waive the requirements to submit certain documents by Ethiopian visa applicants as stated under Article 14(6). Additionally, Ethiopians holding diplomatic or service passports will have to pay the visa fee waived by Article 16(5), point b. The Council also extended the standard visa-processing period from 15 to 45 days. The European executive stated that the mentioned suspensions are temporary but didn’t specify an end date.

The Council asserted that the decision to restrict visa requirements came as a response to the Ethiopian government’s lack of cooperation in the readmission of its nationals who are illegally staying on the territory of the member states following an assessment conducted by the European Commission. This assessment showed that European authorities face persistent challenges in identifying Ethiopian citizens illegally staying in the EU due to the lack of response of Ethiopian authorities to the EU’s readmission requests. These challenges include difficulties in providing travel documents for Ethiopians who will be deported, in addition to difficulties in the organization of deportation operations for both “voluntary and forced returns on scheduled and charter flights” of Ethiopian nationals. The European Commission hence concluded that Ethiopian authorities need to make “significant improvements” in the cooperation on all the steps of the readmission process.

The Council of the EU further specified that the purpose of these restrictive measures is to “encourage Ethiopia to undertake the actions necessary to improve cooperation on readmission matters.”

Ethiopia has been living in a severe humanitarian crisis worsened by a series of persistent armed conflicts between the government and local armed groups since 2020, when the Tigray war began, forcing millions of Ethiopians to flee the country.