EU Discusses Visa-Free Regime

The EU's commissioner for internal affairs, Cecilia Malmstrom, made the remarks after presenting the “post-visa liberalisation monitoring mechanism” to the EU’s Justice and Home Affairs Council on Thursday.

She explained that the mechanism is only intended to speed up the response of the EU in case a member state reports a new, alarming wave of migrants. The mechanism, she explained, may be activated only in “extraordinary circumstances to temporarily stop the visa free regime”.

This move comes after several EU states, including Holland, Austria, Germany and France, raised the alarm last year, saying too many asylum-seekers were arriving from Balkan countries after visa liberalisation was granted.  

Thousands of people, most of whom were ethnic minority residents from impoverished areas of Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo, boarded buses headed for western Europe and applied for asylum status upon arrival. The EU countries complained, explaining that people from this region cannot be given this status except in rare circumstances.

Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia joined Europe's visa-free regime in December 2009. In November 2010, the bloc granted the same privilege to citizens of Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Visa liberalisation allows Balkan citizens to travel to the EU for three months, but does not permit longer stays.

Malmstrom said that the EC plans to present its full report on the visa liberalisation in June and that it will contain more concrete steps how to tackle sudden floods of migrants.

She said that the EU will engage in a dialogue with the Balkans countries to prevent further waves of asylum seekers.