On Wednesday 18 July, the European Commissioner for Internal Affairs, Dimitris Avramopoulos, announced that Kosovo had definitively fulfilled all the criteria demanded for the visa liberalisation regime.
Kosovo ratified the agreement on the demarcation of the border with Montenegro and attained better results in the fight against crime and corruption. This situation will help it meet the final condition set out under EU law in order to qualify for the visa waiver regime for its nationals.
In May 2016, the Commission proposed to the European Parliament and Council of the EU to grant Kosovar nationals a visa waiver when entering the EU if these two demands were met (see EUROPE 11546).
This stage has now been concluded and the definitive confirmation will now need to come from the Council of the EU and Parliament but according to Mr Avramopoulos, “we are now very close”. The civil liberties committee (LIBE) in Parliament gave a partial green light to this system in September 2016 (see EUROPE 11617).
The President of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi, was in Brussels for a number of meetings (see other article) and expressed his wish to see this visa free regime put into practice “in the next 2 to 3 months if possible”. Parliament's rapporteur, Tanja Fajon (S&D, Slovenia) indicated that she would submit the dossier to the LIBE committee immediately after the summer recess and expressed her hope that the Council would take swift action. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)