When the EU will liberalize visa regime with Armenia (video)
Armenia-EU new agreement is planned to sign in November. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Federal Republic of Germany to Armenia Matthias Kisler says that much work must be carried out after it. “Documents must be translated into all the EU languages. If after the signing of the agreement Armenia implements all the commitments, the EU will light a green light for Armenia.” Still a month ago, the EU lit a green light for Georgia, granting visa-free travel to Georgia. Stepan Grigoryan, Head of Analytical Centre on Globalization and Regional Cooperation, inquired from his Georgian colleagues and found out that everybody, who had left for Europe from Georgia in a month, came back. “Moldova makes use of that chance for already 1.5 years and no extraordinary case happened.” Ambassador Kisler noted, “We should understand that Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova and Armenia are different countries, consequently the approaches differ. We haven’t removed visa requirements for Armenia yet, but we try to make improvements in other directions. For example, we have increased provision of long visas. Now we provide long visas by 20 % more.” Stepan Grigoryan notes, before visa liberalization, the rejections in Georgia made up 1%. In Belarus and Russia, where there is no agreement on visa liberalization with the EU, the rejections also make up 1%. Armenia signed the agreement on facilitation of provision of visas still in 2012. At that time 8% of applicants were rejected, but in 2015 12.3% was rejected. “The reason for rejection in many cases is the incomplete documents.” Germany and France are the countries, which unlike other member countries of the EU, decreased the rejections; compared with 19.2% rejections in 2012, in 2015 Germany rejected only 9.4% of applicants. “The index of rejections is still high, but we have carried out improvements in other directions; German consulates started to work better; they have decreased the period between the submission of application and reply,” said Matthias Kisler. According to the official statistics, in the third quarter of 2016, three times more citizens of Armenia asked for asylum in the EU compared with the same period in 2015.
