By Martin Banks - 16th December 2008
There is no point in having such agreements if they are offset by factors which render their advantages invisible
Tony Venables, director of the European Citizen Action Service, on how visa facilitation agreements are working between the EU and western Balkans
A Brussels conference heard that a scheme designed to ease “people to people” contact between the EU and western Balkan states is flawed with “serious problems”.
The visa facilitation agreements (VFAs) signed by the EU with five countries – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia – came into force on 1 January.
They were intended to allow certain categories of citizens to travel and conduct business in the Schengen zone without over-burdensome red tape procedures.
But a conference organised by the European Citizen Action Service (Ecas), an umbrella civil society organisation, heard there are currently serious problems with implementation of the initiative.
Tony Venables, Ecas director, said, “Monitoring of the scheme in the region has shown that implementation of these agreements by member states is defective and that the VFAs are simply not achieving the results for which they were designed.
“Moreover, striking differences in implementation of the VFAs between different EU member states has been reported. The VFA presents a big step on the path of western Balkan countries towards the EU.
“However, there is no point in having such agreements if they are offset by factors which render their advantages invisible.”
Venables said that it was clear that much more effort was needed by the EU to reap the potential rewards of visa liberalisation.
Meanwhile, the EU has been urged to waive visa requirements for Taiwanese tourists.
Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, said that Taiwan has given more than 30 countries, including 20 in the EU, visa-free treatment.
“If European countries could also reciprocate, then the number of Taiwan tourists to Europe will increase dramatically,” he said.
He pointed out that the EU is now Taiwan’s fourth-largest trading partner and that the EU had been “supportive of Taiwan in many ways”, including Taiwan’s bid to join the World Health Organization.
He was speaking at the 25th Taiwan-European conference in Taipei. The conference has played a major role in increasing academic exchanges between Taiwan and European states.
