Visa requirement for Great Britain to be abolished in 2011

It is most likely that the initiative by Prime Minister Božidar Đelić for abolishment of visa requirement for Great Britain in 2010, along with Serbia's admission to the white Schengen list, is not going to give any positive results. People from the British Embassy confirmed that for "Blic nedelje".

Britain is not in the Schengen zone, and the citizens of Serbia who want to travel to Britain will still need visa to do that. The British Immigration Department performs regular global analyses in order to determine which countries represent an immigration risk to Britain.

In accordance with these estimates, the visa regulations are being changed, that is, visa requirement is introduced for some countries and abolished for some others. The last such analysis was performed in 2007.

- Serbia did not have new passports at the time, and it was also lagging behind with the necessary laws. Therefore, there was no reason for recommendation of any change. However, Serbia has registered significant progress since that time - Ambassador Stephen Wordsworth explained on his blog and confirmed for "Blic nedelje" that the next global analysis would be performed in 2011.

That is the earliest time when the visa requirement for the countries in Great Britain may be abolished for the citizens of Serbia.

– If everything goes as planned, we will be able to abolish visa requirement for the citizens of Serbia in 2011. Until then, we will do our best to improve the services we provide – we already introduced the system two years ago to put an end to the queues that many people did not like. We are also trying to issue majority of visas within five working days – says Ambassador Wordsworth.

By the way, British visas are more expensive than the Schengen visas, but it is easier to obtain them for longer periods – six months or one year.