Europese Commissie: open onderhandelingen met landen in West-Balkan over visaverstrekking (en)

Today the Commission recommended that the Council open negotiations on agreements to facilitate the procedures for issuing short-stay visas and on readmission between the European Community and the Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Montenegro, and the Republic of Serbia. As concerns Albania, a Community Readmission Agreement has been in force since May 2006. Therefore for this country only a draft mandate for a visa facilitation agreement is proposed.

After the presentation in May 2006 of draft mandates on visa facilitation and readmission for the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the Commission has now put forward concrete proposals for all Western Balkan countries for negotiations of similar agreements.

When adopting the Commission's proposal Vice President Franco Frattini i, Commissioner responsible for Justice, Freedom and Security, said: "These agreements are crucially important; on the one hand visa facilitation will create simplified travelling conditions to and within the EU for specific categories of citizens of the countries involved whilst, on the other hand, ensuring the return of those who are illegally residing in the EU to their home countries. The EU and these countries will strongly benefit from increased cooperation in the fight against organised crime, corruption, illegal immigration, improvement of border control and security of documents. Therefore I encourage the Member States to follow our proposal and adopt these mandates without delay."

Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn i added: "Visa facilitation is a very important thing for ordinary citizens in the region, to travel, to study, to make business easier with the EU. To get easier access to visas would make the European perspective more concrete to all citizens."

The Commission is proposing to the Member States a list of facilitations which relate to the simplification of documentary evidence to be submitted in support of the visa application, issuing multiple-entry visas with a long period of validity, waiving/reducing the handling fees for categories, to be defined, setting deadlines for processing visa applications in addition to possible exemption of the visa obligation for holders of diplomatic passports.