Ukraine is on the verge of abolishing visa-free travel: the EU said that Kyiv does not comply with the terms of the agreement
The European Commission (EC) has found many violations by Ukraine of the agreement on a visa-free regime, but does not yet consider it necessary to put into effect a mechanism to freeze it, subject to “immediate actions by Kyiv” to fulfill the requirements of the agreement, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
This is stated in the EC's annual report published on Wednesday in Brussels on the implementation of agreements on visa-free travel with the countries of the Western Balkans and the Eastern Partnership program.
“Ukraine has yet to fulfill the criteria for visa liberalization. Many of the requirements of the previous (March) report remain unfulfilled, for which Ukraine needs to take immediate action, which is also necessary to fulfill obligations in the fight against corruption and illegal migration,” the document says.
The report emphasizes that in 2017, compared to 2016, the number of cases of denial of access to Ukrainians to the EU territory increased by 47% and amounted to 33,1 thousand cases. The number of Ukrainians caught living illegally in EU countries, according to the European Commission, in 2017 increased by 13% compared to the previous year and reached 33,5 thousand people. There was a further “significant increase in the number of entry refusals” in 2018, the EC noted, without giving exact figures.
The European Commission noted that illegal migration from Ukraine, as well as from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina remains at a high level. Ukraine also appears on the list of states whose citizens are actively involved in cross-border organized crime groups involved in smuggling, human trafficking, illegal transportation of migrants, drug trafficking, cybercrime, real estate fraud and money laundering. In addition, the European Commission noted that Ukraine remains one of the main transit countries for smuggling counterfeit products into the EU, especially tobacco products. Citizens of Ukraine, the EC noted, are also increasingly involved in complex cyber criminal operations.
In order to prevent visa-free travel from being frozen, Ukraine has been given seven demands that must be met as soon as possible.
Thus, the European Commission demanded to urgently reduce the number of illegal migrants with Ukrainian citizenship arriving in the EU, organize information programs about the rights and responsibilities within the visa-free regime, abandon “excessive regulation” of non-governmental organizations, ensure the independence and effectiveness of anti-corruption structures, restore the independence and work of the special anti-corruption prosecutor’s office , create a fully working system for declaring the property of government officials, increase the effectiveness of the police and intelligence services in the fight against organized crime, including cybercrime.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.