EU Commission officially proposes visa liberalisation for Ukraine

The proposal, unveiled on Wednesday, still needs to be approved by the European Parliament and member states.

By Martin Banks

Martin Banks is a senior reporter at the Parliament Magazine

20 Apr 2016

Under the plans, the EU will agree to lift visa requirements for Ukraine citizens by transferring Ukraine to the list of countries whose citizens can travel without a visa to the Schengen area. 

If and when the proposal is adopted by the Parliament and Council, Ukrainian citizens with biometric passports will no longer require visas when travelling for short stays of up to 90 days to the Schengen area.

This comes after the Commission gave a positive statement last December, confirming that Ukraine successfully met all benchmarks under the visa liberalisation action plan (VLAP). 


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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko planned to discuss the issue of granting visa-free travel to Ukraine's citizens with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in a telephone conversation on Wednesday.

Earlier, Linas Linkevicius, Lithuania's foreign affairs minister, said the EU should speed up visa liberation for Ukraine.

Ukraine has long sought a visa-free regime with the EU and introduction of a visa-free regime for Ukrainian citizens was said to be a priority for the new authorities in Kyiv, after former President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in February 2014.

Announcing the news, the EU Commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos said: "Today, we follow up on our commitment to propose short-stay visa-free travel to the EU for Ukrainian citizens with biometric passports - facilitating people-to-people contacts and strengthening business, social and cultural ties between the EU and Ukraine."

The Greek official added, "This is the result of the success of the Ukrainian government in achieving far-reaching and difficult reforms in the justice and home affairs area and beyond, impacting on areas such as the rule of law and justice reform. 

"I am very satisfied with the progress achieved, it is an important achievement for the citizens of Ukraine, and I hope that the European Parliament and the Council will adopt our proposal very soon."

The so called EU-Ukraine visa liberalisation dialogue was launched on October 2008 and the VLAP was presented to the Ukrainian authorities on November 2010.

 

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