Dear colleagues, “Europe without Barriers” starts to publish papers series on readiness assessment of the Eastern Partnership countries (Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) to the visa liberalisation according to the EU criteria. The papers have been elaborated in the framework of PASOS led project “Paving the Road towards Visa-free Travel between the Easter Partnership countries and the EU”.
Thus we would like to draw your attention to the new research of Armenian think tank titled as “Where do we stand with the visa liberalisation process? ». The paper has been developed by the International Center for Human Development (Armenia) within the framework of the abovementioned PASOS led project “Paving the Road towards Visa-free Travel between the Easter Partnership countries and the EU”.
“Where do we stand with the visa liberalisation process?"
International Center for Human Development (Armenia)
Background notes
The timing of drafting the in-depth study on visa liberalization process in the framework of the “Paving the Road towards visa-free travel between the Eastern Partnership countries and the EU”, was, in the case of Armenia, rather unfortunate. Completed in June 2011, it reflected the then current state of affairs, noting a pace slower than that desired, as well as, an abundance of political declarations, with quite limited number of hard agreements between the two sides.
Last autumn, however, the things started to change, and in the right direction. On September 19, European Commission proposed to open negotiations on visa facilitation, as well as on the readmission agreements between the European Union and Armenia. Two months later, the Council of the European Union adopted a decision authorizing European Commission to launch negotiations on readmission and visa facilitation, and on February 27 this year, the first round of negotiation was held. After the more than two-year long gap since the political commitment on improving people to people contacts, voiced at the Prague Eastern Partnership Summit in May 2009, the pace of the recent developments indeed shows a change in attitude. And more, while the official rounds are to take place every two months, the process is not stalled in between of the rounds, and the two sides are, reportedly, trying to speed up the process even more, though, slightly more informal, mail communications and if necessary video conferences. It needs to be mentioned as well that since October 27, 2011, Armenia also became the 4th country to sign the Mobility Partnership with the EU, and the full agreement is expected to be reached by June this year.
The acceleration of the process is to a large extent related to the relative success of the more general talks on the Association Agreement, where, according to the latest data, 24 out of the 28 sectoral chapters have already been temporarily closed and there is a good progress with the remaining parts of the preamble and political chapters. There has been a significant breakthrough with the completion of a certain set of conditions to allow the launch of the negotiations on the Titles of the Association Agreement to deal with Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area. The EU Council gave the mandate to the Commission to start such negotiations in February 2012 and the actual launch is expected within a month or so. The progress with the DCFTA also means that to keep up the pace, talks on visa facilitation and the readmission agreement are further accelerated, and there is a hope that the agreements will be signed and enforced by October-November 2012.
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