The Diplomat
The Council of Ministers approved last Tuesday the referral to the Spanish Parliament of the agreement between Spain and Qatar on the abolition of visa requirements for holders of diplomatic, special and service passports, while authorizing the expression of Spain’s consent to be bound by the agreement.
In mid-2010, the authorities of the State of Qatar proposed to Spain the initiation of negotiations for the signing of a bilateral agreement to waive visa requirements for holders of diplomatic and special passports, for which purpose they submitted a draft agreement. Negotiations dragged on for several years, until, finally, a consensus was reached on the text in early 2019. The agreement was authorized by the Council of Ministers on September 1, 2020, and was signed in Madrid and Doha on October 26, 2020, on the occasion of political consultations between Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya and her Qatari counterpart, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.
“The agreement aims to promote friendly relations and cooperation between the two countries and facilitate the free movement of holders of diplomatic, special and service passports”, as reported by the Executive.
The possibility of adopting visa waiver agreements for certain categories of passports is provided for in Community Regulation (EC) 539/2001 of March 15, 2001, which, in addition to determining the third countries whose nationals must be in possession of visas when crossing the external borders of the Member States of the European Union, allows the latter to establish exceptions to the visa requirement for nationals of third countries when they are holders of diplomatic, service or other official passports.
Under the agreement, nationals of either country who are holders of valid diplomatic passports may enter the territory of the other country, on official or private visits, without a visa for stays not exceeding 90 days in any 180-day period. The agreement also contains the so-called Schengen clause, which facilitates the computation of the time of visa-free stay in all the territories of the States to which the Schengen Agreement applies.
