YEREVAN, JUNE 22, ARMENPRESS. High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission Federica Mogherini has praised the EU’s visa facilitation and readmission process with Armenia.

Mogherini was speaking at a joint press conference with Armenian FM Zohrab Mnatsakanyan in Brussels.

“We discussed the launching of visa liberalisation dialogue during our Council, and I know how important this is for not only the government, but for the citizens of the country, and I understand it fully.

As you know very well, we have two different phases. Today, we discussed the implementation of the visa facilitation and readmission that we have in place. This is a technical requirement to more forward to the next step. This was a good and useful exercise we did today, in presence of all the Member States that joined - as always - for our Council meetings.

That technical precondition then could lead to start a visa liberalisation dialogue with visa-free regime as the final goal. This is a decision in the hands of the Council that requires a Council decision as you know, it is a question to be put more to Member States than to myself.

What I can say is that, again, the visa facilitation and readmission with Armenia is being well implemented; there are always margins for improvement – we discussed them today – and overall, I think that this is a positive area for our cooperation”, she said.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan