It’s quite easy to get rid of visas between Belarus and Europe. Many European countries, for example Lithuania, Poland, Macedonia, Albania went through this process. It includes only several steps and Belarusian government must take them together with the European Commission
1. Belarusian government must agree to start negotiations with the European Commission, which represents all the countries of the EU in the sphere of visa regime simplification. The EU has invited Belarus to start negotiation in February 2011. But Belarusian government has still not replied to the invitation without explaining the reasons of its unwillingness to simplify visa regime.
2. The result of the negotiation is supposed to be signing of a visa facilitation agreement (simplification of visa regime). The results of signing this agreement:
- consular fees will be reduced to 35EUR instead of 60;
- more multiple-entry visas will be issued;
- the process of issuing visas will be easier;
- there will be more categories of citizens who do not need to pay consular fees for getting visas (children, sportsmen, journalists, students, scientists, etc).
Ukraine, Russia, Armenia have already signed such agreements.
3. Together with the facilitation agreement a readmission agreement must be signed. Readmission agreement is a promise that a country will return its illegal immigrants if they are found on the territory of the EU.
4. The next step on the way to visa abolition is signing another agreement. This is a visa liberalization agreement. Having received country’s response expressing its willingness to abolish visa regime, the European Commission sends an action plan and the visa dialogue between the government and the EU starts.
For the visa abolition agreement to be signed Belarus must do the following:
- Introduce biometric passports (Belarus does have them already! The President’s decree has to be signed and such passports will be issued). It’s an international machine-readable passport that contains a chip with information about the person and fingerprints. Moreover, proper protection of the data bases of citizens crossing borders and having national documents has to be provided.
- Fight against illegal immigration: provide border crossing points with necessary equipment, have filtration stations for migrants, organize the process of migrants registration, etc. Belarus has already done a lot in this sphere.
- Cooperate with the EU and European police in the field of public order and safety, fighting organized crime. It’s a must for our country to conform to the standards of security on its territory.
- Conform to European standards of Human rights and liberties and provide proper level of democracy in the country.
5. If Belarus fulfills the requirements, there will be no visas. Belarusians will be able to come to the Schengen area and stay there up to 90 day every 6 months.
