# The EU Visa Suspension Mechanism: How Brussels Switches Passports Off

> Regulation (EU) 2025/2441 applies from 30.12.2025: nine grounds, a 30% threshold, 12- and 24-month terms. Vanuatu, Georgia from 06.03.2026, Caribbean deadline 2028.

Author: Ksenia Voronova — Lawyer, Family Office (https://wiki.private.law/en/authors/voronova)
Last modified: 2026-08-14T10:10:00.000Z
Canonical: https://wiki.private.law/en/eu-visa-suspension-mechanism
Topics: migration
Jurisdictions: eu, global, dominica, serbia, georgia
Product tags: relocation, compliance
Semantic tags: relocation, compliance

---

## The concept: visa-free travel is an EU administrative decision, not a property of a passport

EU visa policy rests on two annexes to [Regulation \(EU\) 2018/1806](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2018/1806/oj): Annex I lists the countries whose nationals need a Schengen visa, Annex II those who enter without one for 90 days in any 180. Moving a country from one list to the other is an ordinary legislative procedure involving the Council and the European Parliament — in other words, years. Since 2013, though, the Commission has had a short cut: the visa suspension mechanism, which switches off visa-free travel by secondary act without touching the regulation itself. In twelve years it was used exactly once, against Vanuatu. A rewritten version has applied since 30 December 2025, and in its first eight months it has produced one application \(Georgia\) and one ultimatum to five Caribbean states with a deadline of 1 June 2028.

The practical consequence is simple, and unwelcome for anyone who bought a passport advertised as "150+ countries in the index": visa-free access to the Schengen area is not an attribute of a document but a political decision with a review horizon — and the review now starts faster and on a wider set of triggers. Rating a passport by the number of destinations without rating the durability of that number is a methodological error. This is the point at which the mechanism feeds into the broader [assessment of status risk in investment migration](https://wiki.private.law/en/investment-migration-status-risk).

## Regulation \(EU\) 2025/2441: what actually changed on 30 December 2025

The reform took the form of [Regulation \(EU\) 2025/2441 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 November 2025](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A32025R2441), amending Regulation \(EU\) 2018/1806 "as regards the revision of the suspension mechanism". The Commission tabled its proposal back in October 2023; the Council agreed its negotiating mandate on 13 March 2024; political agreement followed on 17 June 2025. Parliament's plenary approved the text in October 2025 by [518 votes to 96, with 24 abstentions](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20251003IPR30660/more-flexible-visa-suspension-mechanism); the Council [gave its green light on 17 November 2025](https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2025/11/17/council-greenlights-new-eu-rules-for-the-suspension-of-visa-free-travel-for-third-countries/). The act was signed on 26 November, published in the Official Journal on 10 December and entered into force on the twentieth day after publication — 30 December 2025.

Four things changed in substance: the list of grounds, the numerical thresholds, the timeframes, and how narrowly a suspension can be aimed.

| Parameter | 2018 version | Regulation \(EU\) 2025/2441 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Threshold for a "substantial increase" \(refusals of entry, irregular stay, unfounded asylum applications, serious criminal offences\) | 50% | 30%, unless the Commission justifies a different figure |
| Threshold for a low asylum recognition rate | no figure set | below 20%, unless the Commission justifies another |
| First suspension \(implementing act\) | 9 months | 12 months |
| Extension \(delegated act\) | 18 months | 24 months, with a further 24 available |
| Investor citizenship as a free-standing ground | — | Article 8a\(1\)\(e\) |
| Hybrid threats and instrumentalisation of migrants | not named expressly | named expressly, within the public-policy limb |
| Third country's visa policy not aligned with the EU's | — | a separate ground |
| Breach of the UN Charter and international human rights law | — | a separate ground |
| Targeted suspension by category | by type of travel document | by document type plus "additional criteria"; officials first |
| Enhanced post-liberalisation monitoring | 7 years | 7 years \(retained\) |

## The nine grounds under the new Article 8a

The revised Article 8a lists nine reasons to switch visa-free travel off. The first four are migration statistics: a rise in refusals of entry and detected irregular stay; a rise in asylum applications coupled with a low recognition rate; deteriorating readmission cooperation; and a risk or imminent threat to public policy and internal security, which now expressly captures serious crime, hybrid threats and weak document security. The recitals gloss a hybrid threat as "state sponsored instrumentalisation of migrants" aimed at destabilising society and institutions — wording drafted with the Belarus–Poland and Belarus–Lithuania experience of 2021–2024 in view.

The remaining five grounds are political. The one that matters for private capital is point \(e\): "the operation, by a third country listed in Annex II, of an investor citizenship scheme under which citizenship is granted to a person, in exchange for pre-determined payments or investments, without that person having any genuine link to that third country". Note the construction. The ground is the existence of the scheme, not proven abuse within it. The recitals state the objective plainly — to deter visa-free third countries from using visa-free access to the Union as a means of attracting individual investment in exchange for citizenship — and point to money laundering and corruption risks.

Then come the rest: a third country's visa policy diverging from the EU's where that divergence may cause a substantial increase in irregular entry by nationals of other states \(drafted with Serbia's and Georgia's visa waiver agreements with third countries in mind\); failure to observe the specific conditions on which liberalisation was granted; deterioration in external relations, including serious violations of the principles of the UN Charter and of international human rights law; and, finally, any other ground provided for in the visa waiver agreement itself.

## Procedure: who presses the button, and how long it takes

The mechanism can be triggered by a member state notifying the Commission, or by the Commission itself on the strength of its own monitoring. A notification is examined "without delay", and the Commission reports the outcome to Parliament and the Council. The genuine novelty is this: where a simple majority of member states notifies the same situation — 14 out of 27 — the Commission must put a draft suspension to the committee. The discretion disappears.

The first suspension is imposed by implementing act for 12 months under the examination procedure. The deadline for tabling a draft in committee is one month from notification for the statistical grounds and most of the political ones, two months for the remainder. An accelerated route exists on "duly justified grounds of urgency", including by written procedure. If the circumstances persist, no later than two months before the 12 months expire the Commission adopts a delegated act extending the suspension by 24 months; Parliament and the Council have two months to object, and absent objection the act takes effect. An extension may be accompanied by a legislative proposal to move the country from Annex II to Annex I, and while that proposal is in passage the suspension can be extended by delegated act for up to a further 24 months. The road back is open at every step: if the circumstances are cured before a term expires, the Commission is obliged to adopt an act lifting the suspension.

> ⚙️ **Timing benchmark.** Member state notification or Commission report → 1–2 months to table a draft in committee → implementing act: suspension for 12 months → delegated act: extension for 24 months \(two-month objection window for Parliament and the Council\) → if needed, a legislative proposal to move the country to Annex I and up to a further 24 months of suspension. The full path from first notification to permanent removal of visa-free travel runs four to five years; the path to the first practical restriction can be a matter of months.

## Partial suspension: the target is a category, not a country

Article 8e\(3\) allows a suspension to apply "to certain categories of nationals of the third country concerned by reference to the relevant types of travel documents and, where appropriate, to additional criteria". The recitals identify only one priority group: the Commission should apply a suspension first to persons holding positions of responsibility — members of official delegations, members of local, regional and national governments, members of parliament, senior civil servants and military officers. Separately, where a suspension rests on human rights or foreign policy grounds, member states may not introduce new exemptions from the visa requirement for diplomats.

There is no legislative category of "holder of a passport obtained under an investment programme" anywhere in the text — an important detail that is regularly retold inaccurately. Technically, such passports are caught by combining document type with an additional criterion, and the criterion that works in practice is the date of issue. That is precisely how Vanuatu was handled: the 2022 partial suspension covered ordinary passports issued on or after 25 May 2015, the date the investment schemes launched.

> ⚠️ **A standard error is to assume that a "real" passport obtained by naturalisation is safe from a partial suspension.** The cut-off is not drawn by how citizenship was acquired — the EU has no access to that information — but by external features of the document: passport type and date of issue. In the Vanuatu precedent the restriction caught every ordinary passport issued from 25.05.2015, including documents held by citizens by birth who simply renewed after that date. The mechanism offers no fine tuning in favour of "honest" holders.

## Vanuatu: the one precedent carried through to the end

The chronology is worth having as a benchmark for timing. Vanuatu's investment programmes launched on 25 May 2015, days before the visa waiver agreement with the EU entered into force on 28 May 2015. The Commission concluded that the schemes cut against the objectives of Union visa policy: no physical presence requirement, processing in as little as 14 days extendable to 30, no personal interviews, no way to verify the authenticity of documents from the country of origin, an extremely low refusal rate \(27 rejections out of 1,988 applications across 2022–2023\) and continued acceptance of Russian nationals after 2022.

After that it went by the book. On 3 March 2022 the Council adopted a partial suspension, in force from 4 May 2022 to 3 February 2023. A dialogue opened on 12 May 2022 produced nothing: as [the Council put it on 8 November 2022](https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022/11/08/vanuatu-council-fully-suspends-visa-free-travel-agreement/), the country had not engaged meaningfully and the circumstances persisted. Full suspension of the agreement has applied since 4 February 2023. The endgame came with [Regulation \(EU\) 2025/11 of 19 December 2024](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ%3AL_202500011), published on 14 January 2025: Vanuatu was moved from Annex II to Annex I for good. As [the Council noted](https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2024/12/12/vanuatu-council-ends-visa-exemption/), the schemes allow third-country nationals who would otherwise need a visa to obtain Vanuatu citizenship in exchange for an investment, and with it visa-free access to the EU. For holders the regulation changed nothing practical — visas had been required for two years — but it changed the status from temporary to permanent. The programme and its current state are covered in the [Vanuatu CBI review](https://wiki.private.law/en/cbi-vanuatu).

## The Caribbean: the letter of 25 June 2026 and the deadline of 1 June 2028

The Commission's eighth report on the suspension mechanism, [COM\(2025\) 792 final of 19 December 2025](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX%3A52025DC0792), was the first to bring the Caribbean programmes into the main text. Its figures: the five visa-free Eastern Caribbean states — Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia — have issued roughly 107,000 passports under investment programmes; 13,113 applications in 2023 and 10,573 in 2024; 2024 rejection rates between 1.7% and 6.5%. The Commission's conclusion: the operation of investor citizenship schemes by visa-free countries creates a non-negligible security risk for the Schengen area and will be considered further under the revised suspension mechanism. Its recommendation to the countries is framed as an interim measure — strengthen applicant screening "pending the termination of these schemes".

### What Brussels actually demanded

On the governments' own account, on 25 June 2026 the Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration, Magnus Brunner, wrote to the five states requiring them to wind up their investor citizenship programmes by 1 June 2028 — a 24-month transition. As interim steps, September 2026 is the point by which the EU expects the complete exclusion of persons subject to EU restrictive measures and enhanced screening of applicants of all nationalities. The Commission has not published the letter, so its content is known from the addressees' official statements rather than from an EU primary source; as at 13 August 2026 no formal proposal to suspend visa-free travel has been tabled for any of the five.

### How the region is answering

On 10 July 2026 the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, convened the Eastern Caribbean leaders in Dominica. The line is common: the programmes are a critical element of the non-tax revenue base, and an abrupt termination threatens budgets, infrastructure, climate resilience, health care and education; the states asserted a sovereign right to set their own economic policy and a single regional position at the negotiating table. None of the five programmes had closed as of August 2026. The scenarios, and what happens to passports already issued, are worked through in the piece on the [2028 deadline for Caribbean CBI](https://wiki.private.law/en/caribbean-cbi-2028); country detail sits in [Dominica](https://wiki.private.law/en/cbi-dominica), [Saint Kitts and Nevis](https://wiki.private.law/en/cbi-st-kitts), [Grenada](https://wiki.private.law/en/cbi-grenada) and [Antigua](https://wiki.private.law/en/cbi-antigua).

## Georgia: the first application of the new text

Georgia shows how the mechanism works on political rather than golden-passport grounds, and how the step-by-step design looks in practice. The first step predates the reform: on 27 January 2025 the Council suspended provisions of the visa facilitation agreement for holders of diplomatic and service passports, members of official delegations, members of the government and parliament, and judges of the Constitutional and Supreme Courts. Formally that is not a withdrawal of visa-free travel but the loss of privileges: the full fee, standard processing times, additional documents.

The second step came under the new regulation. The eighth report recorded that Georgia had breached numerous commitments made during the visa liberalisation dialogue, listing the law on transparency of foreign influence, the law on family values and the protection of minors, the Georgian FARA and amendments narrowing civil society space; a separate item noted 26 visa waiver agreements in force with countries whose nationals need an EU visa, and no progress on visa policy alignment since 2022. According to the [European Commission's visa policy page](https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen/visa-policy_en), the suspension of visa-free travel for holders of Georgian diplomatic, service and official passports runs from 6 March 2026 to 6 March 2027 — exactly 12 months, the standard term of an implementing act. Ordinary passports are untouched. The scenario the Commission has signalled is to widen the suspension to the whole population if the circumstances persist.

| Country or group | What is happening | Status at 13.08.2026 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vanuatu | visa-free travel permanently withdrawn | Annex I, Regulation \(EU\) 2025/11 |
| Georgia | suspension for diplomatic, service and official passports | in force 06.03.2026 — 06.03.2027 |
| Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia | demand to wind up CBI by 01.06.2028 | visa-free travel in force; no formal suspension proposal |
| Serbia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia | enhanced monitoring on visa policy, readmission and asylum | visa-free travel in force |
| Moldova, Ukraine, Kosovo | routine monitoring | visa-free travel in force |

## The Western Balkans: watched, not suspended

The eighth report goes through the region country by country, and for anyone holding a Balkan residence permit or citizenship it reads as a map of potential trouble.

### Serbia

The main complaints are visa policy misalignment \(divergences from the EU visa list cut from 16 to 12 in 2024, but not eliminated\), document fraud and organised crime involvement in passport circulation, and limited cooperation on the readmission of third-country nationals. One item stands out: since 2022 more than 200 Russian nationals have obtained Serbian citizenship under an accelerated procedure. That is not a ground for suspension in itself, but it is the kind of material that goes into a file. The practical angles are covered in the reviews of [residence in Serbia](https://wiki.private.law/en/serbia-residence) and the [Serbian tax regime](https://wiki.private.law/en/serbia-tax).

### Montenegro and North Macedonia

Montenegro closed its investor citizenship programme on 31 December 2022, yet issued 1,282 citizenships in 2024 on applications filed before closure, with 29 cases still pending as of April 2025 — a neat illustration that "the programme is closed" and "no more passports are being issued" are not the same statement. North Macedonia is the only partner in the region with near-complete alignment to the EU visa list; under its economic-interest naturalisation route the report records one application in 2023 and two in 2024.

### Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina

Albania has cut its permanent visa waiver agreements from eight to six and remains a source of a high volume of unfounded asylum applications \(7,140 in 2024\). Bosnia and Herzegovina moved the other way in 2025: seasonal visa exemptions went from one to three, and divergences from the EU visa list from eight to ten; the country is identified as a principal entry point for irregular migration in 2024–2025.

## The internal front: why CBI is under pressure from two sides

The suspension mechanism is an external instrument, applicable to third countries. Inside the EU a different lever operates: on 29 April 2025 the Court of Justice, in [Case C-181/23 Commission v Malta](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX%3A62023CJ0181), held that Malta had breached Article 20 TFEU and Article 4\(3\) TEU by establishing and operating its 2020 scheme for naturalisation for exceptional services by direct investment. The Court found that granting citizenship through a transactional procedure in exchange for pre-determined payments, absent any genuine link with the state, commercialises the status of Union citizen and destroys the special relationship of solidarity and good faith on which it rests. The combined effect of the two lines, external and internal, is that buying a passport in order to reach the EU has stopped being a construction that EU law treats as neutral. What still works on the European track is set out in [routes to EU citizenship](https://wiki.private.law/en/eu-citizenship-routes) and in the piece on the [Maltese merit-based naturalisation regime](https://wiki.private.law/en/malta-citizenship-merit).

## How this changes the valuation of a second passport

Visa-free access is now properly assessed not as a number in an index but as a position with parameters: on what basis it was granted, how long it has been in place, whether the country features in the Commission's report, what commitments it accepted at liberalisation, and whether it runs an investment programme today. A passport from a visa-free country with a live CBI scheme carries a ground for suspension by definition — that is what Article 8a\(1\)\(e\) says — and no amount of due diligence quality on the seller's side removes that ground.

> 💡 **The practical conclusion.** Plan mobility around two independent supports rather than one "strong" document. The working structure is a passport for civil capacity and departure, plus a separately obtained right of entry to the region that matters — a Schengen multiple-entry visa, an EU member state residence permit, a national long-stay visa. That right survives a suspension: the mechanism switches off the exemption from the visa requirement, not visas and residence permits already issued. The logic of distributing statuses is set out in [investment migration models](https://wiki.private.law/en/investment-migration-models) and the [total cost of owning a status](https://wiki.private.law/en/investment-migration-total-cost).

There is a separate layer: the cost of checks. The EU's demand that the Caribbean states tighten screening of all nationalities by September 2026 and exclude sanctioned persons entirely means longer timelines and more refusals; for applicants holding Russian passports it lands on top of restrictions the programmes already apply. What is actually asked, and how to prepare a file, is covered in [due diligence in investment migration](https://wiki.private.law/en/investment-migration-due-diligence) and the treatment of [Russian applicants](https://wiki.private.law/en/russian-applicants-investment-migration).

> 🍓 **Short answer.** Regulation \(EU\) 2025/2441 has applied since 30 December 2025: nine grounds for suspension instead of four, the substantial-increase threshold cut from 50% to 30%, the low asylum recognition threshold fixed at 20%, a first suspension of 12 months instead of 9 and an extension of 24 instead of 18. Operating an investor citizenship scheme without a genuine link between applicant and country is now a free-standing ground — on its own, with no proven abuse required. The practice already exists: Vanuatu was moved to the visa list permanently by Regulation \(EU\) 2025/11; for Georgia, visa-free travel is suspended for diplomatic, service and official passports from 6 March 2026 to 6 March 2027; five Caribbean states were asked by letter of 25 June 2026 to wind up their CBI programmes by 1 June 2028. The conclusion for the holder of a second passport: visa-free travel is a revocable administrative decision, so access to the EU should be planned through a visa or a residence permit, which a suspension does not touch.

## Questions and answers

### **Does a Caribbean passport already issued lose its force if the EU suspends visa-free travel**

No. The suspension mechanism does not affect the validity of foreign citizenship and does not cancel documents — it switches off the exemption from the visa requirement for entry into the Schengen area. The citizenship remains, the passport remains, but travel to the EU will require a visa on ordinary terms. Revocation of citizenship itself is a matter for the domestic law of the issuing state, not for EU law.

### **How long would it take to switch off visa-free travel for the Caribbean states if they do not wind up their programmes by 1 June 2028**

On the procedure: a draft tabled in committee within one to two months of a notification or a Commission report, an implementing act for 12 months, then a delegated act for 24 months with a two-month objection window for Parliament and the Council, then — if necessary — a legislative proposal to move the country to Annex I. The Vanuatu precedent took about two years and nine months from the first partial suspension \(March 2022\) to permanent transfer to the visa list \(December 2024\).

### **Can a suspension be aimed only at people who obtained citizenship by investment**

The regulation creates no separate category of "investor citizens". Article 8e\(3\) allows a suspension to apply to categories defined by types of travel document plus "additional criteria", and the recitals name only officials as a priority group. In practice the CBI cut-off is drawn by passport issue date: in Vanuatu's case the 2022 partial suspension covered ordinary passports issued from 25 May 2015. A criterion of that kind inevitably catches citizens by birth as well.

### **Does a Schengen visa or a residence permit protect against a suspension of visa-free travel**

Yes, and that is the whole point of the mechanism: it withdraws the exemption from the visa requirement, not visas and residence permits already issued. The holder of a valid multiple-entry visa or of an EU member state residence permit continues to enter on that basis. This is exactly why a visa-free country's passport and a right of entry to the EU are worth holding as two independent elements of a plan rather than as one.

### **Is there a risk the mechanism will be used against visa-free countries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans**

The grounds exist in the new text — visa policy misalignment, readmission, unfounded asylum applications. The Commission's eighth report of 19 December 2025 records complaints against Serbia, Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, but as of August 2026 no formal suspension proposal has been tabled for any of them. The region has one realised case, Georgia, and it is political rather than migratory in nature.

### **Is EU citizenship by investment a more reliable option**

That door is closing from the other side. By judgment of 29 April 2025 in Case C-181/23 the Court of Justice held Malta's investor naturalisation scheme to breach Article 20 TFEU and Article 4\(3\) TEU, ruling out the commercialisation of Union citizenship. The practical conclusion: the comparison to make is not "third country versus EU" but between specific naturalisation routes with a genuine residence requirement — those are not exposed to this legal pressure.

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## FAQ

### Does a Caribbean passport already issued lose its force if the EU suspends visa-free travel

No. The suspension mechanism does not affect the validity of foreign citizenship and does not cancel documents — it switches off the exemption from the visa requirement for entry into the Schengen area. The citizenship remains, the passport remains, but travel to the EU will require a visa on ordinary terms. Revocation of citizenship itself is a matter for the domestic law of the issuing state, not for EU law.

### How long would it take to switch off visa-free travel for the Caribbean states if they do not wind up their programmes by 1 June 2028

On the procedure: a draft tabled in committee within one to two months of a notification or a Commission report, an implementing act for 12 months, then a delegated act for 24 months with a two-month objection window for Parliament and the Council, then — if necessary — a legislative proposal to move the country to Annex I. The Vanuatu precedent took about two years and nine months from the first partial suspension (March 2022) to permanent transfer to the visa list (December 2024).

### Can a suspension be aimed only at people who obtained citizenship by investment

The regulation creates no separate category of "investor citizens". Article 8e(3) allows a suspension to apply to categories defined by types of travel document plus "additional criteria", and the recitals name only officials as a priority group. In practice the CBI cut-off is drawn by passport issue date: in Vanuatu's case the 2022 partial suspension covered ordinary passports issued from 25 May 2015. A criterion of that kind inevitably catches citizens by birth as well.

### Does a Schengen visa or a residence permit protect against a suspension of visa-free travel

Yes, and that is the whole point of the mechanism: it withdraws the exemption from the visa requirement, not visas and residence permits already issued. The holder of a valid multiple-entry visa or of an EU member state residence permit continues to enter on that basis. This is exactly why a visa-free country's passport and a right of entry to the EU are worth holding as two independent elements of a plan rather than as one.

### Is there a risk the mechanism will be used against visa-free countries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans

The grounds exist in the new text — visa policy misalignment, readmission, unfounded asylum applications. The Commission's eighth report of 19 December 2025 records complaints against Serbia, Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, but as of August 2026 no formal suspension proposal has been tabled for any of them. The region has one realised case, Georgia, and it is political rather than migratory in nature.

### Is EU citizenship by investment a more reliable option

That door is closing from the other side. By judgment of 29 April 2025 in Case C-181/23 the Court of Justice held Malta's investor naturalisation scheme to breach Article 20 TFEU and Article 4(3) TEU, ruling out the commercialisation of Union citizenship. The practical conclusion: the comparison to make is not "third country versus EU" but between specific naturalisation routes with a genuine residence requirement — those are not exposed to this legal pressure.

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## Factual claims

- EU visa policy rests on two annexes to Regulation (EU) 2018/1806: Annex I lists the countries whose nationals need a Schengen visa, Annex II those who enter without one for 90 days in any 180.
- The reform took the form of Regulation (EU) 2025/2441 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 November 2025, amending Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 "as regards the revision of the suspension mechanism".
- The revised Article 8a lists nine reasons to switch visa-free travel off.
- The first suspension is imposed by implementing act for 12 months under the examination procedure.
- Article 8e(3) allows a suspension to apply "to certain categories of nationals of the third country concerned by reference to the relevant types of travel documents and, where appropriate, to additional criteria".
- The Commission's eighth report on the suspension mechanism, COM(2025) 792 final of 19 December 2025, was the first to bring the Caribbean programmes into the main text.
- On 10 July 2026 the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, convened the Eastern Caribbean leaders in Dominica.
- The second step came under the new regulation.