European Union Justice and Home Affairs ministers, meeting in Luxembourg on 27 April, should support the European Commission's plans to ease visa requirements in the Western Balkans, and roundly reject the proposal to raise Schengen visa fees to 60 euros from the current 35 euros (or less in the case of new EU member-states that are due to join the system in the autumn of 2007), said the Policy Association for an Open Society (PASOS) in a statement today. PASOS is a network of 26 policy centres in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
"Higher Schengen visa fees have no basis in economic policy or border security, and should be rejected," said PASOS. "Higher visa fees, as proposed to the European Council by the French government, would make no difference to human trafficking and cross-border criminal activity," argued PASOS, "but would hit hard ordinary citizens on average incomes in the Western Balkans, and in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, countries that the European Neighbourhood Policy explicitly seeks to engage in closer co-operation."
The costs of visa-processing should be shared more evenly among the Schengen countries, said PASOS, so that the burden is not borne predominantly by those with most embassies.
On visa policies and border policing, the older EU member-states "should look to the experience of new members, such as Poland and Hungary, which have issued hundreds of thousands of visas to Ukrainians, while at the same time curbing illegal transit migration," said PASOS. "The impact of higher visa fees on cross-border trade and family ties would be devastating, not least to ordinary citizens: sixty euros amounts to one-third of the average monthly net wages in Serbia and Montenegro, or half the average monthly wage in Ukraine."
PASOS called on the European Council "to reject the proposed rise in Schengen visa fees, and to adopt policies encouraging and promoting greater cultural and economic exchange, including tourism, between EU countries and their neighbours ? and to follow the example of new EU member-states by ending visa fees for the Western Balkans, and for Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova".
This statement is supported by the following policy centres:
Center for Economic Development (CED), Sofia, Bulgaria
Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), Tbilisi, Georgia
Center for Policy Studies at the Central European University (CPS - CEU), Budapest, Hungary
Centre for Public Policy PROVIDUS, Riga, Latvia
Institute for Public Policy (IPP), Chisinau, Moldova
Institute of Public Affairs, Warsaw, Poland
Jefferson Institute, Belgrade, Serbia & Montenegro
International Centre for Policy Studies (ICPS), Kiev, Ukraine
For contact details of PASOS members, see
www.pasos.org/pasos-member-organisations
In addition to PASOS members, the following organisations also support the statement:
Association for International Affairs, Prague, Czech Republic
The Educational Society for Malopolska, Nowy Sacz, Poland
Polish Medical Mission, Krakow, Poland
Polish-Ukrainian Cooperation Foundation PAUCI, Warsaw, Poland
Rzeszow Regional Development Agency, Rzeszow, Poland
Stefan Batory Foundation, Warsaw, Poland
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