Romania has reached an agreement with Canada on visa liberalization in 2017, President Klaus Iohannis announced on Friday.

Update: The deal with Canada is conditioned by the signing of the trade agreement between the European Union and Canada (CETA). Romania and Bulgaria, which had objections to this deal due to the visa issue, withdrew their opposition, but the Belgian region of Walloon also opposes CETA and may block the whole deal. Thus, it's up to the Walloons (French Belgians) now if Romanians will go to Canada without visas starting 2017.

The Romanians who previously had a visa for Canada will no longer need a visa to enter this country starting May 1, 2017, and this measure will apply to all Romanians starting December 1, 2017. The President made the announcement while attending the EU Summit in Brussels.

“I have good news this morning. We have reached an agreement with the Canadian side, a reasonable agreement for both parties and thus we are in a very suitable situation to withdraw the reserve we declared towards CETA (Comprehensive and Trade Agreement e.n.). Romania no longer has any objection to the trade agreement with Canada,” Iohannis said.

The announcement came one day after President Iohannis said that he had a talk with Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos about the Romanian-Canadian negotiations on visa liberalization for Romanians, and that the signs were good.

“There are negotiations and the signs are good. Sure, at this stage, is already depends more on the Canadian side to take a determined step to complete negotiations successfully. We remain reserved until then, but there are real chances to make progress in this direction,” Iohannis said on Thursday.

The Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced earlier this week that Romania couldn’t support the steps taken towards the signing and the provisional application of the EU-Canada comprehensive economic and trade agreement (CETA). The decision was made because Canada didn’t come with an offer for visa liberalization that Romania would accept.

The Romanian authorities didn’t accept Canada’s first offer, which provided that visas for Romanians traveling to Canada would be lifted in stages by 2018 at the latest.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com