ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the latest EU visa policy towards Eastern Europe, looking in particular at the policy convergence processes underlying visa liberalization reforms. As regards Europeanization, it has been the predominant theoretical framework to explain EU migration cooperation with third countries in the current International Relations literature. Scholarly attention has focused to a degree of approximation on the acquits of third countries in the framework of the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP). The requirements that the EU is asking third countries to implement in order to abolish the visa regime have been analysed in terms of policy convergence. The visa facilitation regime, whereby the visa obligation still prevails but with simplified procedures for certain categories of people, has been institutionalized as a first step towards visa liberalization in Eastern Europe. Visa liberalization gained momentum when the EU decided to lift visa requirements for the citizens of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Montenegro and Serbia.
