Roger Albinyana i Saigi, President of LYMEC, declared: “We cheer the European Commission for finally acknowledging that EU’s existing bureaucratic visa policies and practices impose real difficulties and obstacles to legitimate travel and that long queues in front of EU consulates only create fustration and incomprehension from our neighbours. From this perspective, we can only welcome moves to provide simpler and faster visa procedures for certain specific categories of travel, particularly for business, official and educational purposes, though we would have preferred to go one step further.”

LYMEC has recently launched a Europe-wide campaign titled “No Visa - Europe is our home” in the framework of which European young liberals ask for the complete abolishment of tourist/short-stay and student visas for European citizens traveling from an EU country to a another European country and reverse, and complete abolishment of the same between non-EU European countries.

Roger Albinyana i Saigi added: “I am however amazed that the EU pretends to embody the whole of Europe, and puts on an equal footing Ukraine and Libya, Moldova and Jordan, or Armenia and Morocco. This strategy should be named EU Neighbourhood Policy, not European Neighbourhood Policy. Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and the three Caucasus countries are European countries, both geographically and culturally. In the context of the period of reflection on the future of Europe, we would like to encourage the European Commission to clearly define once and for all the borders of the European integration project, even if some countries will obviously take much longer than others to join the EU. We need transparency and long term vision if we want to gain the confidence of EU citizens”.

More information: http://www.lymec.org/novisa

ENDS

Press coordination:

Julia Leferman, LYMEC Bureau Member, press@lymec.org, +32.2.237.01.46