Filenews 13 January 2022
How many countries can you travel to with your passport alone, without needing a visa? For the average traveller, this could be a question in trivial or in the National Geographic contest. But for many of the world's wealthy businessmen, it can be an indicator of economic security, and an incentive to obtain a second or third passport at prices that can reach even seven-digit numbers.
Visa-free travel is the cornerstone of the Henley Passport index, which includes the world's most "powerful" passports, created by London's global citizenship advisory firm Henley & Partners. Since 2006, the company has been monitoring which of the world's passports secure the most "free" and which the fewest in countries around the world, based solely on data provided by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
In general, travel "freedom" has expanded globally in recent years. In 2006, the average international traveller could visit 57 countries without having to issue a visa beforehand. Today, that number has climbed to 107. However, this apparent "freedom" is not exactly what it seems, because it conceals what Henley & Partners calls "growing inequality between the countries of the North and the South, globally".
Henley's latest ranking shows that when it comes to travel "freedom," the world can be divided into privileged and non-privileged. At the top of the privileged countries are Japan and Singapore, whose passports ensure entry, without a visa, to 192 destinations.
On the other hand, fewer "borders" open the passports of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, whose citizens can enter visa-free in fewer than 30 countries, while states such as Cameroon, Angola and Laos ensure entry to 50 countries - less than half the average.
Cyprus and Greece
As far as Cyprus is concerned, it is in the 14th place, with the Cypriot passport securing entry, without a visa, in 176 countries while Greece is ranked 7th along with Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom and Malta (185 countries).
Passports that increased their power the most
Between 2006 and 2022 Ukraine added 109 additional destinations while the United Arab Emirates secured access to an additional 140 destinations. During the same continuum, the U.S. added 56 destinations, while Canada and Mexico added 60 and 61 destinations, respectively. For many countries in Africa and the Middle East, their global mobility index has been overtaken by the rest of the world.
The growing gap between richer and poorer countries in terms of international mobility was exacerbated by the advent, at the end of November, of the coronavirus variant Omikron. The discovery of this particular strain was combined with a series of punitive restrictions against, in particular, African states, which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described as "travel apartheid". Last month, the U.S. lifted travel restrictions on those of African countries.
UNITED STATES
As for the US, this year's rankings can in no way be seen as a "return to the top". The American passport, which had begun to lose its glamour even before the pandemic broke out, slipped from the top of the list to the eighth. This year, it climbed a little higher and is in sixth place, as it "opens" the borders of a total of 186 visa-free countries. But since several countries are "tied", in fact a total of 15 countries have "stronger" passports to show than the US.
The top fifteen passports of 2022:
192 countries - Japan, Singapore
190 countries - Germany, South Korea
189 countries - Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain
188 countries - Austria, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Sweden
187 countries - Ireland, Portugal
186 countries – Belgium, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Britain, USA
185 countries - Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Greece, Malta, United Kingdom
183 countries - Hungary, Poland
182 countries - Lithuania, Slovakia
181 countries - Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia
180 countries - Iceland
179 countries - Malaysia
178 countries - Liechtenstein
176 countries - Cyprus
175 countries - United Arab Emirates
Source: Capital.gr
