The Parliament of the Economic Community of West African States has made case for a visa-free regime between the ECOWAS member states and the European Union.
Speaker of the ecowas parliament, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, made the call at a meeting with the president of the European Parliament, Honourable Martin Schulz, during a one-day working visit to the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium.
Senator Ekweremadu said the new visa regime had become imperative, given the increasing diplomatic and economic cooperation between both economic blocks.
Senator Ekweremadu allayed the fear by EU member-states that such a visa regime would result in influx of people of ECOWAS into Europe.
He also assured the EU parliament that ECOWAS was on top of the Mali crisis, but called for more material and financial support to ensure that terrorist insurgents were stamped out from not only Mali, but the West African sub-region.
