Citizens of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia may be able to travel to most European Union member states without a visa as of next month, if ministers endorse draft rules adopted by the European Parliament today (12 November).

The rules were originally drafted by the European Commission; an amended document was adopted by Parliament yesterday, with 550 MEPs in favour, 51 against and 37 abstaining.

Member states’ interior or foreign ministers are now expected later this month or in early December to turn the document into legislation. The new rules are to come into effect on 19 December. They will allow citizens of the three former Yugoslav republics to travel to the entire Schengen area for short-term visits without having to obtain a visa first.

Kosovo, whose independence has not been recognised by all EU member states, is not included in the scheme.

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Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina failed to meet the technical criteria in time for December, but MEPs inserted language into the Commission proposal to stress that the two countries were on track for a second round, possibly by the middle of next year.

A senior international official in Bosnia said that waiting for half a year more would not be a major problem for citizens of the country, which is in the grips of a political crisis, but warned that any longer delay would create the impression of discrimination on the part of the EU against citizens of the three countries. Bosnia has a Muslim plurality, while Albania and Kosovo have Muslim majorities.

MEPs had been lobbying hard to insert language into the draft decision that is to be approved by EU member states’ ministers that holds out the prospect of visa liberalisation for Albania and Bosnia. Jelko Kacin, a senior liberal MEP from Slovenia, said that it would be “divisive, unfair and create instability” if the two countries were left out for a long time. He said that this also applied to Kosovo and that the liberal group in the Parliament “regretted” that the process of abolishing visa requirements had not yet begun there.