European Commission issues recommendations to Ukraine as part of extending visa waiver

The full text of the recommendations has been published on the European Commission site, Ukrinform reports.

"Overall, Ukraine continues to fulfil the visa liberalisation benchmarks and has taken action to address some of the Commission’s previous recommendations. However, further efforts are needed, where possible in the current context," the document states.

The recommendations that the European Commission provides to Ukraine this year consist of three main points.

The first concerns the alignment of Ukraine's visa policy with the EU’s list of visa-required countries, especially with regard to countries presenting irregular migration or security risks to the EU.

Currently, Ukraine has visa-free travel agreements with 15 countries included in the EU list as visa-required: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. As noted in the European Commission report, no progress was observed on the part of Ukraine in 2022 in aligning with the EU visa policy in relation to the mentioned countries.

Second, Ukraine is encouraged to continue ongoing efforts in the fight against organized crime, with a particular focus on countering the smuggling of firearms and drugs, despite the war-related challenges.

"The potential increase of firearms smuggling is a concern for the EU and Ukraine. In February 2023, the EU started implementing the `EU list of action to counter firearms and other small arms and light weapons diversion in the context of Russia´s aggression against Ukraine´.21 There is a specific focus on making full use of border security measures at the EU´s external borders to detect smuggling of firearms," the document says.

As noted, EU member states, including their customs and border agencies, the EU Border Agency Frontex, EMPACT (European Platform Against Criminal Threats), Europol, as well as the EU Border Assistance Mission for Moldova and Ukraine (EUBAM) play a main role in these efforts.

Finally, the third point of the recommendations issued by the European Commission for the extension of the visa-free travel is continued efforts in the fight against corruption, including the adoption of the action plan for the implementation of the 2023-2025 asset recovery strategy and by amending ARMA (Asset Recovery Management Agency - ed.) legislation on managing seized assets.

After Ukraine received the status of a candidate to join the EU in June 2022, the Ukrainian authorities launched a reform of the overall law enforcement sector, which is “in progress”.

Despite complications in the implementation of war-related reforms, Ukraine is making progress in the introducing thematic Action Plans, including in the fight against drug smuggling and organized crime.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, since 2017, the European Commission has adopted five preliminary reports in the context of the Visa-Free Travel Suspension Mechanism, which included an analysis of the situation in the countries of the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia), as well as in the countries that are members of the Eastern Partnership (Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine), with which the EU has a visa-free travel, allows citizens of the said countries to stay without visas in the territory of the EU states for a period of 180 days within a year.

In March 2022, in response to Russian aggression against Ukraine, the EU initiated the so-called Temporary Protection Directive for citizens of Ukraine, mainly women and children, who were forced to flee the country to escape Russian shelling, which, in particular, provides the right to unhindered entry and stay of Ukrainians on the territory of EU member states.

Ukraine has enjoyed visa-free status with the EU since May 2017.