Barbados, Belize, Dominica and St. Vincent and the Grenadines move towards full Free Movement on 1 October 2025
Four Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Member States—Barbados, Belize, Dominica and St. Vincent and the Grenadines—are on track to implement full Free Movement among themselves from 1 October this year. By implementing the full free movement regime, these four countries have agreed to grant their nationals the right to enter, leave and re-enter, move freely, reside, work and remain indefinitely in the receiving Member State, without the need for a work or residency permit.
Their nationals will also be able to access emergency and primary health care, and public primary and secondary education, within the means of the receiving Member State.
This is in keeping with a CARICOM Heads decision taken at the 49th Regular Meeting of the Conference of CARICOM Heads of Government this year.
Representatives from these four Member States have been meeting and working to ensure the required measures to support the full free movement of their nationals will be undertaken and commence on 1 October 2025.
This free movement arrangement falls within the new Enhanced Cooperation Chapter of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas. Under that Chapter, the Conference of CARICOM Heads can allow groups of at least three Member States to seek to advance integration among themselves where the Conference agrees that the targeted objectives cannot be attained within a reasonable period by the Community as a whole.
This type of free movement expands what is offered under the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME). It is available to all CARICOM nationals of the participating four countries.
The other Member States participating in the CSME will continue to operate free movement under the existing Regimes (Skills, Services, Business Establishment and general facilitation of travel).
The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) was established on 4 July 1973 with the signing of the Treaty of Chaguaramas, which was revised in 2001 to allow for the establishment of a single market and economy. CARICOM comprises fifteen Member States and six Associate Members and is home to approximately sixteen million citizens, 60% of whom are under 30 years old. CARICOM’s work rests on four main pillars: economic integration; foreign policy coordination; human and social development; and security cooperation.
The members of CARICOM work together to create a Community that is integrated, inclusive and resilient; driven by knowledge, excellence, innovation and productivity; a Community which is a unified and competitive force in the global arena, where every citizen is secure and has the opportunity to realise his or her potential with guaranteed human rights and social justice, and contributes to, and shares in, its economic, social and cultural prosperity.
CARICOM remains one of the best examples of integration in the developing world.
The CARICOM Secretariat, the principal administrative organ of the Community, is headquartered in Georgetown, Guyana.
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The islands of Antigua-Barbuda, St. Kitts-Nevis, Montserrat and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, should also look at the value of implementing said structure within its borders. We are already semi there so why not go full throttle.
PM Motley has lost her mind. We have too many foreign hungry bellies in Antigua as it is, so no thanks. We need to deport most of the foreigners we have now.