Brussels proposes easing of EU visa regime for Georgia

Brussels - Georgia's citizens should enjoy easier access to the European Union's Schengen zone, the European Commission urged Tuesday, as it called upon EU member states and the European Parliament to endorse a visa facilitation deal.

The agreement, to be accompanied by a parallel agreement on repatriation of Georgians caught staying illegally on EU territory, would speed up procedures and drop visa prices from 60 to 35 euros (80 to 45 dollars).

"To reduce visa barriers is a way of bringing people closer to one another and to enable citizens to travel, and connect all over Europe," the EU's Home Affairs commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, said in a statement.

"With these agreements in place, Georgia will be more closely connected to the European Union," she said.

Once approved by the EU's assembly and member states, the visa deal would end the de facto preferential treatment of people living in territories that have broken away from Georgia with Russian backing, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Their population currently enjoys easier access to the EU by using passports issued by Russia, which has already signed visa- facilitation deals with the EU.

That creates resentment in Tblisi, since Abkhazia and South Ossetia have no international recognition, except from Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Nauru, a tiny island nation in Micronesia.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia have had de facto independence since the early 1990s, but their isolation from Georgia proper increased in the wake of the 2008 Russian-Georgian conflict, which led Moscow to set up military bases in the two territories.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/320858,brussels-proposes-easing-of-eu-visa-regime-for-georgia.html.