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What has been achieved after one year of implementation of the Action plan on visa liberalisation?

On Friday, November 25th, 2011, Civic initiative “Europe without Barriers” has conducted press-briefing on: ”The first year of the Action plan on visa liberalization between the EU and Ukraine: what has been done, what lies ahead?”. The event was held as a part of the multilateral project "Paving the road towards visa-free travel between the Eastern Partnership countries and the EU”, initiated by the PASOS (Policy Association for an Open Society, Prague). Civic monitoring of the implementation of the Action plan on visa liberalisation of EU to Ukraine is carrying out at support of the International Renaissance Foundation.

”The first year of the Action plan on visa liberalization between the EU and Ukraine: what has been done, what lies ahead?”

The year, elapsed since the European Union Action Plan on visa liberalization have been granted for Ukraine, showed that this policy tool, that combines a clear purpose with transparently expressed criteria, is enough effective instrument of mobilizing the efforts of the state for achieving an attractive aim.

Today, Ukraine continues to implement first legislative and policy framing phase of the document. In September, the European Commission delivered the first report, covering the assessment of changes, eventuated in June. The second report is expected at the end of the year.

The extents of implemented legislative and policy framing work in the framework of the VLAP are significant, and advantageously differ in the background of most of the other priorities of the Ukraine-EU cooperation.

Experts ascertain uneven implementation of VLAP that consists of four blocks. The first block, “The security of documents” suffers as a result of the adoption failure of the core law on “Documents identifying a person and confirming Citizenship of Ukraine”, which was adopted by Parliament, but contained a number of problematic regulations, and, as a result, was vetoed by the President. The lack of this law stipulates inability of adoption by-laws, related to it, and, accordingly, the release of a new generation documents (with electronic media information).

The second block on “Illegal migration, including readmission”, achieved substantial progress, since the largest number of laws and by-laws were adopted according to this course, which mostly correspond to the standards of relevant international conventions, in particular regarding the rights of refugees and asylum-seekers. The most important are adopted Laws on “The legal status of foreigners and persons without citizenship, and on “The refugees and persons in need of additional or temporary protection”.

Significant progress has been observed in the third block on “The public order and security”, in particular on combating human trafficking (appropriate law was adopted), at the same time, the legislative regulation of anti-corruption policy remains imperfect.

The forth block on “The fundamental rights and foreign relations” fixed a moderate progress, the problem here remains the question of effective anti-discrimination norms.

The Action Plan on the visa liberalization greatly promotes reforms, necessary to get visa-free regime. At the same time, the value of the implementing reforms goes far beyond the issue of visas, as it concerns the strengthening of the state ability to modernize policy in a few sectors, not always connected with themselves at the same time: migration, asylum, border management, reforms of identification documents, anti-discrimination, human trafficking counteraction, drug trafficking and other kinds of organized crime, combating corruption, international law enforcement cooperation, etc. 

Ukraine made significant progress in the implementation of the first (legislative and policy framing) phase of the VLAP, but it is too early to state its implementation. According to the optimistic scenario, we can expect the full implementation of the first phase of the VLAP by mid-2012, due to conservative scenario – towards the end of the 2012.

In the press-conference the following experts and officials participated and made their comments: Iryna Sushko, “Europe without barriers”;  Kateryna Levchenko, La-Strada, Ukraine; Julia Tyshchenko, Ukrainian Institute for Political Researches; Oleksandr Sushko, Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation.

The monitoring outcomes will be soon avaliable in our web-site.