Ukraine is not supposed to obtain visa free regime with the EU in 2012-2013
Ukraine is not supposed to obtain visa free regime with the EU in 2012-2013. It was a conclusion of the Europe Without Barriers Public Initiative that released the outcomes of annual comprehensive civic monitoring of the Action Plan on Visa Liberalisation (VLAP), granted to Ukraine by the EU on November 22, 2010. The European Program of the International Renaissance Foundation supports the monitoring.
Ukraine’s biggest achievements was registered in the following policy areas: border management (introduction of integrated border management IBM), migration policy, including its legal and institutional set up; asylum policy and institutional mechanism of regulation procedures of refoulement and returning asylum seekers and refugees. The progress has been achieved in anti-corruption, counter-crime and countertrafficking policy. Substantial progress has been fixed in providing institutional framework for the policy on trafficking in human beings and fighting against corruption.
The least progress among 4 VLAP Blocks was registered in Block 1 “Document Security Including Biometrics”. It was caused by the lack of coherence of central executive authorities, the government as whole and certain interested groups of parliamentary majority concerning the principal draft law “On Documents Identifying a Person and Confirming Citizenship of Ukraine”.
Natalia Belitser, the expert of Pylyp Orlyk institute of Democracy stressed that Ukraine did not move forward in adoption of comprehensive antidiscrimination legislation. She also admitted that an Antidiscrimination Strategy developed by the Ministry of Justice set up a significant step forward, but is not sufficient in terms of goals formulated in VLAP.
Oleksiy Khmara (TORO Creative Union) put an accent on problems related the legal framework and institutional set up Ukraine’s anticorruption policy and emphasized the insufficient political will of Ukrainian authority to introduce anticorruption reforms and fulfill its obligations taken under International treaties.
Researcher from the Open Society Institute (Budapest) Valeriya Shamray pointed out the fact that Ukraine does not fully use the possibilities of the EU technical assistance in order to obtain visa-free regime with the EU. She also defined priority directions for applying EU assistance: migration policy, border management, public order, fighting against illegal migration, countering human trafficking.
Europe Without Barriers Public Initiative
Iryna Sushko
iryna_sushko@ukr.net
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The Goal of the European Program is to promote Ukraine’s European integration by providing financial and expert support to relevant civil society initiatives.
