If you want to travel to Cornwall for an appointment to London for an appointment to London or as a tourist, you have to take your time in advance and pull out your credit card. Since April, EU citizens have had to apply for a visa, an electronic travel permit (ETA) for entry to Great Britain. A photo of the passport, all sorts of information about the person, a current photo is necessary, and a payment of 19.30 euros. If you are lucky, you get the visa with a 16-digit reference number within a few seconds.
And vice versa? Citizens of the United Kingdom travel to the EU without a lengthy filling out forms without having to pull out the credit card in advance. If Germany and Great Britain sign a friendship contract on Thursday, nothing will change in the blatant mismatch when entering.
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Closer cooperation in foreign policy
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A good two months after his election as Chancellor, Friedrich Merz (CDU) travels relatively late for his inaugural visit to the United Kingdom, where he will talk to Prime Minister Keir Strander in London and sign the friendship contract. Merz and Strandmer have known each other for a long time and met Ukraine on their journey with France and Poland, as well as at the G7 and NATO summit.
The focus of the friendship contract is said to be the cooperation in foreign and security policy. Even if both countries are closely linked to NATO and its assistant clause (Article 5), the agreements are to go beyond NATO obligations.
Student exchange should be relieved
In the contract text, there are sentences such as: “There is no strategic threat to one that would not be a strategic threat to others”, or the contracting parties “provide each other in the event of an armed attack on the other party, even with military means”. This is also intended as a complementary wording for corresponding French-British agreements, according to German government circles.
If it were to Germany, Great Britain would again enable visa-freeness for EU citizens. Appropriate requests may have been formulated, albeit without effect. After all, there should be relief in student exchange.
Close German-British cooperation is important right now: in the defense against the Russian threat, the fight against the climate crisis and in the preservation of free trade.
Anton Hofreiter (Greens), Chairman of the European Committee in the Bundestag
In the future, the effort through so -called student collection lists should be simplified, according to German government circles. In the future, pupils and teachers should be able to travel to Great Britain without passports and without a visa. Since Brexit – Great Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU) in 2020 – trips from school classes to Great Britain have been complicated.
The friendship contract should also contain agreements on economic growth, aviation, digitization and to “strengthen contacts between our citizens”. In the judiciary, migration and the fight against smugglers and human trafficking, Berlin and London want to work more closely together.
Hofreiter considers closer cooperation to be more important than ever
Anton Hofreiter (Greens), the Chairman of the European Committee of the Bundestag, welcomes the Federal Chancellor’s journey to London. “Close German-British cooperation is important right now: in the defense against the Russian threat, the fight against the climate crisis and in the preservation of free trade,” says Hofreiter.
The friendship contract was drawn up in close coordination with the European Commission, said Hofreiter: “I have expectation to Federal Chancellor Merz that the current federal government continues this type of cooperation. The federal government should take an example.
