Brussels, 12/02/2013 (Agence Europe) - Kosovo is going to have to make greater endeavours if it eventually wants to obtain its system of visa liberalisation - a system which will enable Kosovan nationals to visit the EU for three months with just a passport. This was stated in a European Commission report published on Tuesday. The report gave a mixed assessment of the reforms undertaken as part of the negotiation launched in January 2012. While the Commission takes note of all the work already undertaken to set up the legislative arrangements required on re-admission, document security, border management and the fight against organised crime, it says a law still needs to be adopted for inter-agency cooperation for border management, and a law still needs to be adopted on tackling human trafficking. Certain aspects of legislation on asylum, for example, or on border control or financing political parties are still not totally in line with EU standards and must be amended, as must the laws on recovering the assets of criminal groups.
The Commission notes that the current capacity of the country to tackle organised crime and corruption remains limited and this could have a potentially significant impact on the EU's internal security.
For the Commission (and the NGO, Transparency International), corruption besets the country, as do trafficking and organised crime. Although laws have been established, cooperation between police, the customs and other authorities needs to improve. The same goes for drug and heroin trafficking domestically, where anti-drugs agency resources are insufficient. Kosovo is one of the countries being monitored by a number of member states that have called on to Commission to introduce a safeguard clause allowing suspension of visa waiver systems. Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany and the Netherlands are concerned about the negative effects of similar systems introduced up until now for Serbia, Bosnia, Albania and Macedonia (FYROM). They believe that this has led to bogus requests for asylum being made. (SP/transl.fl)