The French Institute in Taipei yesterday said France was not opposed to Taiwan’s inclusion in the Schengen visa-waiver program, which would give citizens of the Republic of China visa-free entry to more than 20 European countries, adding that negotiations on the program were between Taiwan and the EU, and not between Taiwan and France.
The program is currently in the screening phase in the EU. If approved, it would give Taiwanese visa exemptions to the Schengen countries, including France.
The institute’s comments came after Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方), a member of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Affairs Committee, said a recent court decision favoring Taiwan in the scandal-plagued Lafayette frigate deal between Taiwan and France in 1991 could be a factor impeding Taipei’s efforts to obtain Schengen visa-waiver privileges.
Lin alleged that France had long wished the matter would be resolved “in a unofficial way” and settled out of the court, adding that Paris had informed Taipei that it would oppose Taiwan’s request to be included in the EU’s visa-free program if the Lafayette case were not dealt with “properly.”
On May 3, the Ministry of National Defense won a lawsuit it had filed with the Paris-based International Court of Arbitration over the deal, in which the court ruled that the French company, Thomson-CSF, since renamed Thales SA, had engaged in bribery with numerous parties to secure the deal to sell six Lafayette frigates to Taiwan for US$2.5 billion. The company was ordered to repay the Taiwanese government about US$861 million.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) said that there was no evidence that France was linking its stance on the visa-waiver program for Taiwan with the Lafayette case.
Furthermore, “France did not put forward any requirements” for the visa-free request, Yang said, though it had earlier expressed concern over the low percentage of Taiwanese who hold e-passports, which contain advanced anti--counterfeiting features such as fingerprint data.
At present, about 10 percent of Taiwanese have such passports, the minister said.
Taiwan launched the e--passports at the end of 2008, and it will take some time for the number of e--passport holders to rise, Yang said, adding that the explanation had helped France understand the situation.
The French government did not raise the matter when Taiwan’s case was discussed at the Visa Working Group at the Council of the European Union on Sept. 15, Yang said.
He said the ministry remained optimistic that Taiwan would obtain visa-exemption from the EU by the end of this year at the earliest, or in January at the latest.
The case, which has cleared the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, is pending review by its Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, Yang said.
The European Parliament is expected to vote on the proposal at a plenary session next month, while the Council of the European Union, a co-decision-maker in the case, will also decide on the case by a vote afterwards.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods