The Council of the EU has ended restrictive visa measures that had applied to Ethiopia since 2024, following an improvement in cooperation on the return of Ethiopian nationals from EU countries.
The decision was taken on 18 May 2026 and reverses a partial suspension of EU visa rules that had been introduced to encourage Ethiopia to cooperate more on “readmission” — the process of taking back citizens who are in another country without legal permission to stay, the Council disclosed on Tuesday.
Cooperation has “improved substantially”, particularly in identifying Ethiopian nationals staying illegally in EU member states, issuing emergency travel documents and organising return operations regularly, according to an assessment by the European Commission cited by the Council.
The change will take effect once member states have been individually notified.
How the EU can apply visa restrictions
The Council said the EU’s visa code requires the European Commission to regularly assess how non-EU countries cooperate on readmission, and those assessments can lead to visa-related measures if a country is judged not to be cooperating sufficiently.
In such cases, the EU can suspend parts of the visa code’s provisions.
