EU Parliament Lifts Visa Obligation for Moldovans
The European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs committee voted on Wednesday 12 February, overwhelmingly in favour of lifting visa obligations for Moldovan citizens. The issue of cancellation of visas for Moldovans would be next put to vote in the European Parliament plenary session at the end of this month. A final decision in this regard will be taken by the Council of the European Union, but it remains a simple formality.
Previously, European officials had said that Moldovans could travel without visas to EU countries in the summer of 2014. They will now be able to travel visa-free as early as April.
“It is a logical measure”, said conservative Romanian MEP Monica Macovei, a former justice minister in her country, who chairs the delegation to the EU-Moldova Parliamentary Cooperation Committee. “After the disaster in Vilnius, and after Ukraine shifted its course away from Europe, fears are high that Moldova might follow the same course. After all, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Belarus are lost, Ukraine is following the same course, while Moldova and Georgia, the only remaining two, are fragile democracies.”
Both countries, Moldova and Georgia, have initialed Association agreements with the EU in November, at the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius, where Ukraine was expected to fully sign a similar treaty. The Association Agreements with the European Union, signed by both Moldova and Georgia, include an Agreement on Free Trade. The full signing of the initialed agreements with the EU is expected in the first half of the year, and ratification – by the end of 2014.
EU diplomats consider that Moldova finds itself in a better situation than Georgia. Run by a symbolically called four-party Alliance for European Integration, which is permanently boycotted by a powerful pro-Moscow Communist opposition, Moldova still has part of its territory occupied by Russian forces, in what is called a “frozen conflict”: the region of Transdniestria, a situation similar to that of the breakaway Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The Moldovan pro-Western four-party coalition was never thought to be an easy affair. For the voters at large, the four governing parties are identified by the personalities of their leaders rather than by their declared desire for European integration. The lifting of the visas and the future signing of the Association agreement with the EU is certain to boost the shaky popularity of the coalition in power.
“We are certain”, says another Romanian MEP, Marian-Jean Marinescu, shadow rapporteur for Moldova for the EPP group, “that after the Sochi games, and after the next G8 Summit, which will also take place in Sochi in June, Russia will start putting a lot of of pressure on these countries again. We give them tools for resisting.“
Romanian opposition politicians are very active in favour of Moldova, while the leftist coalition government in Bucharest has been reluctant to take any political initiative in favour of the neighbouring sister country, for fear of angering Russia. Romania, of which Moldova was a province until the end of World War II, is thus less active in favour of the former Soviet republic of Moldova that Poland, or the Baltic countries.
It is estimated the some 800.000 Moldovan citizens (out of a population of less than 4 million) live and work in EU countries, half of them in Italy.
The Civil Liberties Committee also approved today the EU’s Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement with the Central American countries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. The already existing agreement had to be re-aproved under the new rules of the Lisbon treaty.
The EU-Central America Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (PDCA) was signed in December 2003 in Rome. After the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the Parliament had to give its consent again, although the text of the PDCA in this new proposal remained unchanged.
The Greens/EFA group introduced an amendement against the agreement’s clause providing for the readmission of expelled immigrants and asylum seekers whose applications are not accepted. The Greens/EFA consistently vote against readmission agreements. Their amendment was stating : “The reference to “illegal migrants” is not appropriate, as no human being is illegal, while standard EU language is “irregular migrants” or “persons residing without authorisation”.”
Source: neurope.eu
Tags: Association Agreement, Eastern Partnership, EU, Moldova, Schengen, travel, visa abolition, visa facilitation, visa free