EU Council confirms visa-free regime conditions for Ukraine

An EU Council committee confirmed on Nov. 17 the conditions for launching a visa-free regime with Ukraine, which will take effect once the process of determining a mechanism for quickly suspending the regime upon necessity is complete, the EU Council reported on its website. Further reviews will be conducted in the EU Council and European Parliament, which must vote to approve the measure, news reports said.

Zenon Zawada: A large rift has emerged this year between unelected Western institutions and bureaucracies, such as the EU Council, and institutions with elected officials, who are increasingly favoring restrictions on migration and immigration amid populist wave sweeping the West. We don’t expect the European Parliament will approve a visa-free regime with Ukraine and Georgia anytime soon and that’s not only because of the Russian lobby and anti-immigrant parties. Extending a visa-free regime to these countries is a Pandora’s Box that must be accompanied by a visa-free regime with Turkey, whose president has been very vocal in advocating this for his citizens.

So it’s not only anti-immigrant legislators who will hesitate. After the election of Donald Trump, European Parliament centrists could act to prevent further gains by anti-immigrant parties and politicians in France and Germany next year by opposing extending visa-free regimes. Despite all this, Ukrainian President Poroshenko continues to speak optimistically about visa-free travel to the EU to the Ukrainian public, which will likely have yet another broken promise to berate him for.