Georgia hopes visa-free travel still possible despite German objections

PanARMENIAN.Net - Georgia still hopes to win visa-free travel to the European Union, its envoy to Brussels said on Friday, June 3, after last-minute objections from Germany seem to have suspended the process, Reuters reports.

Struggling to control immigration fuelling support for nationalist and populist parties across the bloc, the 28-nation EU failed to agree for the second week running on easier travel requirements for Georgia's three million residents.

The south Caucasus country has met all the criteria for the EU visa waiver, but Germany led the last-minute opposition with backing from France and Belgium, diplomats said.

It seemed Georgia was being held hostage to build leverage in the more complicated visa liberalization talks with Turkey - whose help the EU needs to control immigration under a deal sponsored by Berlin - and Ukraine, where a peace deal negotiated by Germany and France to end a conflict with Russia-backed rebels in the east of the country has stalled.

"It's a little bit childish to say that we are hostage of the political circumstances, because these are the ones that dictate decisions and we understand this," Georgia's EU Ambassador Natalie Sabanadze told Reuters.

"But I do say that we feel that we have fulfilled our part of the bargain and now it's up to the EU to deliver ... The question now becomes political, it's a matter of taking a political decision."

By far the biggest one in line is Turkey, which wants relaxed travel rules for its 79 million residents in return for preventing refugees and migrants from leaving its shores for EU member Greece and taking back those who make the journey anyway.

After facing heavy criticism at home over her handling of the migration crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has invested heavily in the deal with Ankara. But Ankara was enraged on Thursday when the German parliament recognized a 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces as genocide.

Turkey does not meet the visa-free criteria and will probably miss an end-June deadline for that, although it could win final approval for visa-free travel in the fall.