With the claims that Britons may be forced to pay some amount of fee for visiting Europe after Brexit, the United Kingdom’s second-highest placing on a list of the world’s most powerful passports suddenly saw a deceleration in its demand.
Global financial advisory firm Arton Capital’s Passport Index said that UK passport holders are currently able to visit 157 countries visa-free. They are ranked just after Germans and Swedes, who has the authority to enter 158 countries with just their passports for documentation.
However, Prime Minister Theresa May’s promise that she would trigger Article 50 by the end of March 2017, the UK’s likely exit from the EU by mid-2019 could see a significant weakening of that passport’s power.
the executive body of the European Union suggests on the other hand suggested that Britons may need to apply online in advance of visiting EU countries after Brexit and then pay a fee much like with the United States’ ESTA scheme.
This scheme is nothing but an extra barrier of red tape that UK passport holders are unaccustomed to and does not necessarily mean to affect the Passport Index rankings. Frankly, this rule is nothing compared to the countries with the least powerful passports.
Afghanistan is rated in the bottom of the Passport Index and citizens with only an Afghani passport to their name can visit just 24 countries visa-free. But not to forget, out of these 24 countries, St Vincent & The Grenadines, Dominica and Micronesia are some of the lovely options.
Still, that’s a difference of 134 countries between the most powerful and the least powerful passports.
Behind Afghanistan was Pakistan, with just 27 countries it can enter visa-free, and then Iraq, with 29. Completing the bottom five are Syria and Somalia, with 31 countries apiece.
Reduction in passport power comes from various reasons, although, most of the time it is from the relationships with the other countries. It covers everything from security risks and potential infractions of immigration rules, to “tit-for-tat” fees.
