According to the will of the EU states, the citizens of Kosovo should no longer be required to have a visa when traveling to the European Union by January 1, 2024 at the latest.
After a six-year delay, the EU Council decided today that visa-free negotiations can begin. As early as 2016, the EU Commission had proposed a visa exemption for Kosovo.
On the basis of the negotiating mandate, the Czech EU Council Presidency wants to start talks with the EU Parliament. Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky spoke of an important step in implementing the promise of visa exemption for Kosovo.
This means that holders of Kosovar passports can travel to the EU without a visa for a period of three months. One condition for this was Kosovo’s accession to the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS), which is scheduled to come into force in November 2023.
Joy among local EU parliamentarians
“It took far too long for the member states to finally agree to the negotiations,” criticized Green MEP Thomas Waitz. This has severely damaged the credibility of the EU. “Of all the Western Balkan countries, Kosovo has already fulfilled most of the conditions,” said Waitz.
The head of the SPÖ-EU delegation and his parliamentary group’s Kosovo rapporteur, Andreas Schieder, was also pleased. He is convinced that the negotiations with the EU Council will quickly come to a successful conclusion.
The ÖVP MEP Lukas Mandl made a similar statement. “If there are setbacks once more, the EU will lose face,” he warned. “Even following fulfilling all the criteria, Kosovo still had to wait almost half a decade. In view of the obvious weaknesses in EU decision-making structures that have come to light here, the question of treaty changes once more arises.”