Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions on Cooperation in the Area of Justice and Home Affairs within the Eastern Partnership

The Stockholm Programme, adopted by the European Council on 2 December 2009, stressed the importance of the external dimension of the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) policies for the successful implementation of the objectives identified in the Programme and the need for it to be fully coherent with all other aspects of the European Union foreign policy.

Facilitation of people-to-people contacts, while promoting fundamental rights and strengthening the rule of law, enhancing the judiciary, as well as engaging in judicial cooperation has proved to be important prerequisite for maintaining peace and stability and has beneficial effects on the economic, cultural and social development of all the countries involved.

This has been one of the guiding principles of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) established at the Prague Summit in 2009 by the EU and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine. It remains a core objective of the Eastern Partnership to enhance mobility of citizens in a secure and well-managed environment. This objective entails visa facilitation and readmission agreements as a first step.

Once these agreements are concluded and effectively implemented, the EU and the partner countries will take gradual steps towards visa-free regimes in due course on a case-by-case basis and provided that conditions for well-managed and secure mobility are in place. The Warsaw Eastern Partnership Summit of 29-30 September 2011 should confirm the key objectives and lend further impetus to this partnership including in the JHA area.

The dialogue and cooperation with the EaP countries in the area of JHA is already well developed, both at bilateral and at multilateral level. Therefore, there is no need to establish new frameworks but rather to consolidate, streamline and complement the existing ones.

EUR-Lex: COM(2011)564: Follow the progress of this document through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2011:564:FIN

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