Armenia has set 2029 as its target for completing the EU-Armenia Visa Liberalization Action Plan, the step that would open visa-free travel to the European Union, Interior Minister Arpine Sargsyan said on Sunday. She named the deadline at a meeting in Yerevan with a delegation of the Council of the European Union’s Working Party on Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Sargsyan, Armenia’s lead negotiator in the process, called the plan’s successful implementation one of the government’s priorities and said Armenia was committed to carrying it out in full. Proper implementation, she said, would strengthen Armenia’s democratic institutions and establish a visa-free regime with the EU.
The meeting was attended by the head of the EU Delegation to Armenia, Ambassador Vassilis Maragos, ambassadors of EU member states, and representatives of the Interior Ministry. Maragos thanked Sargsyan for her leadership in the visa liberalization process and for the reforms underway in the Interior Ministry and the Police.
Sargsyan pointed to migration management as a priority of the plan, and said a new biometric identification system, set up through a public-private partnership, would launch on November 1. On border security, she said Armenia was moving to an integrated border management system, with a strategy to be submitted to the government for approval by the end of the year.
How the Process Got Here
The European Council approved opening visa-liberalization talks with Armenia in July 2024, and the EU and Armenia launched the dialogue in Yerevan that September. In November 2025, the European Commission handed Armenia the Visa Liberalization Action Plan, a set of 74 benchmarks across document security, migration, public order and security, and fundamental rights, to be met in two stages before visa-free travel can take effect.
The Commission issued its first progress report in the spring of 2026, recording what it called Armenia’s clear political commitment to the reforms. It will keep assessing Armenia’s progress, with support from EU member-state experts, and the visa-free regime takes effect only once every benchmark is met, not most of them. Once complete, the arrangement would let Armenian citizens travel to the Schengen area for short stays of up to 90 days in any 180-day period.
Visa liberalization is one track of a widening Armenia-EU relationship that has accelerated over the past year, alongside the first EU-Armenia summit in May and the EU’s decision this month to suspend duties on around 80 percent of Armenian exports.
