EU Council committee approves compromise on visa-free regime

An EU Council committee approved on Dec. 7 a compromise text with the European Parliament on enhancing the mechanism of halting a visa-free regime for Ukrainians and Georgians in the event of an emergency, which is widely viewed as the last legal hurdle to its approval. The regulation will be submitted to the European Parliament for a vote in the first reading, and later to the EU Council for adoption, the EU Representative to Ukraine reported on its Facebook page.

As a result of the compromise, all the hurdles to establishing the EU visa-free regime have been removed, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told reporters in Hamburg on Dec. 8, as reported by the pravda.com.ua news site. “As of today, this issue is absolutely beyond politics,” he said. “This is a technical issue and of organizing votes.” Five votes still need to occur to establish the regime, possibly beginning as early as next week, he said. The EU Parliament will reconvene in mid-January, when voting can occur as well, he said.

Zenon Zawada: The visa-free regime has the firm backing of the EU establishment. However, we’ve always seen the biggest hurdle as the European Parliament, where the threat of populism is as great as ever. Although the Ukrainian president claimed there’s a firm majority in the EU Parliament in support of visa liberalization, we see an even chance that this majority could be undermined, whether by abandoning MPs (concerned about the public backlash) or by legislative hurdles or delays created by extreme parties aligned with Russia. The Turkish president has already made threats should his people not gain visa-free travel.

A visa-free regime would significantly boost Poroshenko’s standing among the public, which is as low as ever. That’s why he’s been advocating it so aggressively, though he doesn’t help the cause when promising the regime will be granted in November. The arrangement would also grant more legitimacy to Ukrainian statehood and make Ukrainian citizenship possibly more attractive than Russian citizenship, which doesn’t offer visa-free travel to Europe.