Bulgaria should prove that it can fight organised crime in an effective manner if it wants United States to lift visa restrictions for Bulgarian nationals, the US consul in Sofia Daniel Perrone said, as quoted by Dnevnik daily, on March 24.

Bulgaria has made steady progress over the past two years, when the share of rejected applications went down from around 23 per cent to 14 per cent, he added.

Last year, the US Congress softened the visa regime regulations, introducing new security measures, but also reducing the visa-waiver requirements for candidate countries to 10 per cent rejected applications, compared with the earlier three per cent.

The citizens of 12 out of EU's 27 member states need visas to travel to the US, including 11 countries that have joined the bloc since 2004, with the exception of Slovenia, but also Greece. Six of those countries - Estonia, Latvia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania and Slovakia - have signed memoranda paving the way for visa-free travel this month.

The European Commission, however, wants a collective deal, demanding that Washington reciprocates and drops its visa requirement for citizens of EU member states, given that US nationals do not require visas to travel to any of the bloc's countries.