EU to launch visa-free talks ahead of Serb vote

BRUSSELS - The European Commission will start visa liberalisation talks with Serbia this week in a move it hopes will boost the pro-European camp before the May 11 parliamentary election.
EU Commissioner Jacques Barrot will travel to Belgrade on Wednesday and Thursday to present a "road map" for talks that should lead ultimately to visa-free travel in the European Union for Serbia's 7.5 million citizens, a Commission spokesman said on Monday.
"We have a building block to tell Serbs, 'We will open doors to the EU and we invite you to join us and become members of the European family'," spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing said.
The official start of the talks, announced in January, comes a week after the 27-member bloc signed a long-stalled pact on economic and political ties with Serbia in a first formal step on the long road to membership.
The visa road map Barrot will present to Serb President Boris Tadic and Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic includes specific conditions which Serbia needs to fulfil to get visa-free access to the EU, he said.
"After that we can start the talks on the substance. We cannot say when the (visa) liberalisation will take place, but that is the long-term objective."
Conditions include meeting EU standards on security of borders, police cooperation, fight against organised crime and adding biometric identifiers in passports, Roscam Abbing said.
Brussels hopes the prospect of visa-free travel will give beleaguered pro-European forces in Belgrade a political boost.
Tadic defeated nationalist Tomislav Nikolic in the February presidential election, but narrowly.
With public dismay high over Kosovo's Feb. 17 Western-backed secession from Serbia, polls forecast a tight parliamentary vote. Nationalist prime minister Vojislav Kostunica is set to tip the result in favour of the anti-EU camp if the two main parties are tied.
Serbs have needed a visa to travel to the EU since the wars that followed Yugoslavia's break-up in the 1990s. Most young Serbs who will take part in the May 11 election -- which analysts say amounts to a referendum on the country's EU future -- have never been abroad.
The EU overcame internal differences to sign last week a Stabilisation and Association Agreement on political and economic ties with Serbia, although its implementation remains frozen before Serbia fully cooperates with the U.N. war crimes tribunal.