Some have already taken action to help push for the abolition of the EU's visa policy although Chris Patten, the EU's external affairs commissioner, said in May that "there is no Union policy to deny entry visas to Taiwanese government officials."
`A long journey'
"I said in Copenhagen last week that the member parties ... should ask questions in their parliaments, pressing the ministers and the cabinets to loosen this line and to adopt the US line, which is to give visas on a case-by-case basis," Hans van Baalen, vice president of Liberal International, told the Taipei Times, while admitting the fight would be "a long journey."
The foreign ministry official admitted the task was an onerous one.
"For Taiwan's president, vice president and premier in particular, it's impossible to arrange for them confidential trips to EU countries under the media scrutiny. But then any public appearance of these officials in the EU will raise the eyebrows of China, a situation the Europeans would try to avoid in the first place by not granting them any visa," he said.
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