Kalina Stoyanova, Bulgarian National Radio, Horizon programme, 17 January 2025
On 17 January 2025, Bulgarian National Radio’s “Horizon till Noon” programme interviewed Vladimir Mitev about Romania’s accession to the Visa Waiver Programme, which allows visa-free travel to the US for up to 90 days for tourism or business. Vladimir Mitev spoke about the campaign that was carried out in order for Romania to meet the requirements for access to this programme. He explained that the country’s accession to this programme is considered a success by the Romanian state and will strengthen the country regionally and internationally.
Vladimir also recalled that the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is making efforts for Bulgaria to join this programme. One of these is the ongoing campaign “You don’t need an Oscar to get a visa to the US”, which aims to provide Bulgarian citizens with the necessary knowledge to apply for US visas in an informed way, thereby reducing the refusal rate. Finally, Vladimir said that not every opening to the West or to the world should be seen as a threat. On the contrary, it can be a source of opportunities that Bulgarians deserve and need.
The interview can be followed with English subtitles here and its whole transcript is below.
Irina Nedeva: If I dare to paraphrase Todor Kolev’s famous song “When will we reach them…”, I will add not “the Americans”, but in this case “the Romanians”. Because we know that the abolition of visas for Romanians is not only due to a drop in the rejection rate of American visa applications, but that this abolition is also a kind of sign of the quality of life and democracy in the country concerned. There is hardly a country in the EU whose citizens travel to the US on a visa requirement for normal tourism.
Why are US visas being abolished for Romanians? A decision to this effect has already been announced on 10 January 2025. With this question, our trainee reporter Kalina Stoyanova begins her interview with journalist Vladimir Mitev, co-founder of the blog “The Bridge of Friendship” – one of the cross-border journalistic projects that closely follows the processes in Bulgaria and Romania.
Vladimir Mitev: The issue is the abolition of a certain type of US visas for Romanians travelling for tourism or business. Other types of travel still require a visa.
There was a joint campaign between the US ambassador in Bucharest and the Romanian government. The purpose of this campaign was to renew the visas of people who had already been issued visas and whose visas were about to expire. Normally, when renewing a visa that has already been issued, it is a person who is obviously trustworthy and has no problem getting a new visa. It was expected that the renewal of these visas would actually lead to a very small number of refusals, with the result that the overall refusal rate for Romanians would fall below the key level of 3%.
Finally, last year it was announced that this requirement had been met. And as a result, on 10 January 2025, it was formally announced by both sides that from March 2025, US visas would indeed be waived for this type of travel. There will be a different procedure for visiting the US, which will be much easier.
This has been hailed as an important achievement for the Romanian state, as there are currently only a very small number of countries in the EU whose citizens still require a visa to travel to the US. Romania’s international status is being consolidated.
And do you think there will be a problem with controls on travellers?
There will always be controls. This is not about chaos. We can see that even when it was announced that the border controls between Bulgaria and Romania would fall because of the full Schengen accession, the controls did not exactly disappear, but rather were transformed.
And what happened in Bucharest on 12 January 2025? Could you tell us something about the protests?
At that time there was a sovereignist protest in Bucharest which, according to different estimates, gathered at least several tens of thousands of people. Some said there were fewer. Some of the demonstrators themselves said there were 150,000.
This protest is perhaps just a preparation for what we should probably expect in the coming weeks. With a conservative American president like Donald Trump, the sovereignist tendency in Romania should be less stigmatised. In this respect, we will also have to wait and see what happens with the new presidential elections in Romania, which are expected to take place in the spring. For now, it seems that the Romanian sovereignists are united behind Calin Georgescu.
In December 2024, the country’s presidential elections were cancelled because the Constitutional Court ruled, on the basis of documents from some of the secret services, that there had been a distortion of the electoral process as a result of interference by a foreign state actor. Russia was clearly meant. In the first round of the cancelled presidential elections, the candidate of the so-called sovereignist trend in Romania, Calin Georgescu, came out on top.
His voters believe that Donald Trump’s inauguration in the White House should give them additional arguments to defend their interests in Romania, since Trump himself has certain attitudes that are close to the sovereignist ones in Romania. And that is why they are beginning to show signs that their discontent must be heard. They want Georgescu to be allowed to run again in the new presidential elections. Therefore, on 12 January 2025, we witnessed the sovereignists signalling that they still want to have their way.
Speaking of the new US president, Donald Trump, how do you think the decision to partially cancel US visas for Romanian citizens will be received by the Americans?
I do not expect any resistance, as long as this is a policy that the American state has not been pursuing since yesterday. Besides, US-Romanian relations and cooperation, for example in the field of security, are well known. Romania is a very important country on NATO’s eastern flank. A military base is being built in northern Dobrudja, which will be the largest NATO base in Europe. Until now, Romania has been outside the Visa Waiver Programme and this has fuelled certain anti-American attitudes. Some people in Romania used to say that the Romanians do various things for their American partners, but do not get enough or anything from their American partners in return. That argument is now falling away. So I expect the US-Romanian relationship, which has been going on for a long time, to continue its momentum under Donald Trump.
Do you think it was a good decision to abolish visas?
On 10 January 2025, when it was officially announced that Romania would join the Visa Waiver Programme, I had the opportunity to listen to the evening political analysis programme on Radio Romania, the Romanian national radio. The programme presented this news as a very important event that would establish Romania in the region. For example, there was material on how the Republic of Moldova saw this increase in the power of the Romanian passport, which is also important there because many Moldovans have Romanian citizenship.
Looking at Bulgaria, do you think that there is a possibility that visas will be abolished for Bulgarians as well? When can we expect such an event? As far as I understand there is a Bulgarian campaign related to visa waiver…
Yes, exactly.
There is indeed a response from former Foreign Minister Ivan Kondov to a parliamentary question on this topic. This answer is on the Parliament’s website and is dated 31 December 2024. This answer makes it clear that Bulgaria is indeed making efforts to be accepted into the visa-free travel programme. Some steps in this direction are linked to a certain intensification of contacts between Bulgarian officials and US officials who take decisions in the security field and in the State Department. An agreement on cooperation in the area of border control has also been concluded.
Last but not least, a campaign is under way, the face of which is the Bulgarian actress in Hollywood, Maria Bakalova. This campaign has a website called VizaAcademy.com. The aim of this campaign, in our way, is to promote how to approach applying for an American visa – for example, how to communicate with interviewers, what types of visas are available and how to make the most informed decisions regarding this visa application so that refusals are significantly reduced.
The former Bulgarian Foreign Minister’s response included information that in the last US fiscal year (ending 30 September 2024 for the US) there was a significant decrease in the number of refusals of Bulgarian citizens applying for US visas, but it is still not enough to cover the demand that Romanians currently have. The response also predicts that Bulgaria could join the Visa Waiver Programme this year if it manages to reduce its visa refusal rate to below 3%.
How does visa waiver encourage citizens to live and work in their home countries?
I do not see the waiver of some US visas for Bulgarians as a threat that Bulgarian citizens will emigrate en masse to the US. I do not think that this possibility of visa-free travel is only about the loss of population. It simply allows for greater communication between the countries, which could be mutually beneficial. It is not so easy to leave your country, to find a job, or to find living conditions abroad. I think it is much easier to travel within the Schengen area if you want to emigrate. The fact that it would theoretically be possible to travel for 90 days without certain restrictions, for example as a tourist or for business trips to the USA, would not lead to a great loss of population. This is travel under certain rules, not permanent settlement.
So it would make travel and business easier?
Yes. I don’t think that opening up to the West, or even the world, should necessarily be seen as something that is always a threat. It can also bring many new opportunities. Our country and our people, young and old, deserve and need more opportunities.
Irina Nedeva: Interview by Kalina Stoyanova with Vladimir Mitev, one of the eminent experts on the processes in Romania and Bulgaria.
Photo: “Romania, welcome to the Visa Waiver programme!” (source: Facebook)
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