The EU’s European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and, in the case of the six eastern neighbourhood countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine), the EU’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) initiative offer deeper political and economic integration to countries bordering the EU. The two key components of greater integration are respectively:
(i) economic integration, primarily trade and investment, and
(ii) people-to-people contact, including mobility of labour, cultural and educational exchanges, and tourism.
The ENP Action Plans contain provisions on gradual harmonisation of the national legislation with the acquis communautaire in selected areas. The Action Plans set an agenda for harmonisation of product standards and provide detailed provisions on customs, state aid and competition policy. Successful implementation can lead to the conclusion of deep and comprehensive Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with the ENP partners (under negotiation with Ukraine and Moldova), covering also non-tariff barriers to trade. Estimated gains from deep integration – tackling non-tariff barriers – can reach up to 8-10 per cent of GDP for the eastern neighbours.
The second component, people-to-people contact and mobility, necessitates a sea-change in visa policies between the EU and the EaP countries to facilitate greater access to the EU for the citizens of the EaP countries: in short, visa-free travel, also known as “visa liberalisation”. Questionnaires and criteria foreshadowing European Commission roadmaps (or “action plans”) for meeting the technical criteria that could lead to visa-free travel could be developed along the lines of those for the Western Balkans that have ushered in a new era for Serbs, Montenegrins, and Macedonians who since December 2009 (and since December 2010 for citizens of Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina) have enjoyed visa-free travel to most EU countries (those in the Schengen zone). These questionnaires would not assume that “visa dialogue” – the current phase of visa relations between, e.g. Ukraine and the EU, which does not assume that the end-result will be visa-free travel – will lead to a visa liberalisation “roadmap”, or as has been achieved in the case of Ukraine (agreed on 22 November 2010) and Moldova (24 January 2011) an “action plan”, but that it will place the countries in a stronger position to speedily comply with the terms of a roadmap or action plan if it should emerge, or for visa-free travel to come about through the “visa dialogue” process directly if all technical criteria are met before a roadmap or action plan is introduced.
