Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, responsible for Home Affairs, called on several countries in the EU's Eastern Neighbourhood and the Western Balkans on Wednesday 19 December to increase their vigilance if they want to maintain their visa liberalisation regime in the EU.
Requesting in particular the former to be concerned about unfounded asylum claims made in the EU by some of their nationals, he called on others to also monitor more closely irregular migration movements, which could also affect the conditions that have allowed these visa-free regimes to be granted. The Commissioner, speaking in progress reports on European visa policy, cited Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, among others, whose number of “unfounded" asylum applications from nationals increased in 2018, the Commissioner said, which should convince the governments of these countries to take immediate action to remedy them.
Irregular migration from Ukraine, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to the EU remains high, the Commissioner noted. For Serbia, the Commissioner also called for intensified efforts to ensure full alignment with EU visa policy. "While Serbia has ended the visa waiver for Iranian nationals, concerns remain about other countries whose nationals are exempt from the visa requirement to travel to Serbia", he said. Again for Serbia, cooperation on readmission and return of third-country nationals could improve, whereas it is generally satisfactory with the other countries of the Western Balkans.
However, the Commissioner wanted to point out that, to date, all these countries fully meet the criteria for benefiting from their visa-free regimes and that these negative elements should therefore be considered more as "warnings" and prevention messages. For Kosovo, which has not yet been able to benefit from the visa-free regime due to a lack of an EU Council decision to that effect, the Commissioner could only repeat that the country had fulfilled all the criteria.
Finally, all eight countries covered by the report should generally intensify their efforts against corruption and organised crime.
Still no reciprocity with the United States
In addition to visa-free regimes, the Commissioner reviewed visa reciprocity and the discrimination that citizens of some EU Member States still face when entering the United States compared to those of other Member States. For example, in twelve months, the Commission has failed to impose reciprocity on the United States for citizens of five Member States (Bulgaria, Poland, Cyprus, Croatia and Romania), who still need a visa to travel to the United States.
American authorities rely in particular on the refusal rates of visa applications for the citizens of these five countries, sometimes because of fears that they may submit asylum applications on their territory. The Commissioner reiterated that the Commission was helping these five countries to overcome these difficulties by supporting, for example, information campaigns for citizens. Nevertheless, progress has been made, with these five countries having signed bilateral security agreements with the United States.
The remaining visa reciprocity problems with Canada, Japan, Australia or Brunei have all been resolved. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)