Croatian Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic signed on Wednesday, on behalf of the European Union, an agreement on visa liberalisation and readmission with Belarus, the first agreement Croatia signed on the EU's behalf as its president.

The agreement was signed in Brussels by Bozinovic, EU’s Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson and Belarus Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei.

Work on the agreement took some ten years and it is expected to help mobility, notably of young people in Belarus who are the most pro-European.

“I’ve had the honour and the pleasure, together with Commissioner Johansson, to sign an agreement which will contribute to better and more intensive contact between EU member states’ citizens and Belarus,” said Bozinovic.

Johansson said the signing of the agreement was an important step in boosting EU-Belarus cooperation.

Asked by the press if Kosovo could expect the revocation of visas for the EU during Croatia’s EU presidency, Bozinovic said Croatia strongly supported that but could not promise anything.

“Croatia supports the enlargement process and, as part of that, it also supports visa liberalisation. Just how realistic that is is a different matter because several important member states are against that,” he said.

Belarus has the largest number of Schengen visas issued per capita and the lowest number of rejected visa applications.

“That is certainly an additional factor which qualified Belarus to enter into this programme with the EU,” Bozinovic said, indirectly confirming that the high number of rejected visa applications for Kosovo citizens is one of the major obstacles to a consensus among member states on entering Kosovo into the visa liberalisation programme.

Today’s agreement needs to be approved by the European Parliament, after which the Council of the EU will formally ratify it. It will enter into force after ratification in the Belarus parliament, which could happen by the middle of the year.