Second meeting of the advisory board for ESI's White List Project

Members of the advisory board

On 13 July 2009, the second meeting of the advisory board for ESI's Schengen White List Project took place in Istanbul. ESI chairman Gerald Knaus and project director Alexandra Stiglmayer briefed the board's chairman, Giuliano Amato, a former prime minister and a former interior minister of Italy, as well as the other board members present – including Otto Schily, former interior minister of Germany – and special guest Milica Delevic, head of Serbia's European Integration Office, on the activities undertaken so far to ensure that the visa requirement is abolished for all Western Balkan countries. They also discussed the European Commission proposal on visa-free travel for the Western Balkans.

Among other things, it was agreed to continue to monitor whether Montenegro and Serbia will fulfil the remaining open benchmarks so that they qualify for visa-free travel from January 2010 onwards, as the Commission proposes; to help Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which do not yet fulfil the benchmarks, meet the conditions and be proposed for visa-free travel as soon as possible; and to ask for a roadmap for Kosovo, which has been left out of the EU's visa liberalisation process.

In the evening, ESI organised a boat's tour on the Bosporus for the advisory board and invited the members to dinner at the shores of the strait.

The Schengen White List project is supported by the Robert Bosch Stiftung

Milica Delevic, Verena Knaus (ESI), and Sandra Breka (Bosch Stiftung)

Giuliano Amato and Otto Schily