EU has yet to endorse Ukrainian visa-free laws, Tombinski says

Ukraine hasn’t drawn any rebukes from the European Commission regarding its legislation necessary for the EU visa-free regime, Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Hroisman said on Nov. 23, as reported by the pravda.com.ua news site. Based on that, he said he would sign the legislation and it will be published. In response, EU Delegation to Ukraine Head Jan Tombinski said on his Facebook page that no EU body has yet to offer any commentary regarding the legislative package, “not publicly, nor in any other way.”

The assessment is ongoing, Tombinski said, and only afterwards will Brussels be able to inform Kyiv of its position. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s parliament has delayed transferring the legislative texts to the EU for its review, reported the eurointegration.com.ua news site, citing anonymous sources.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in his Nov. 21 appeal to the Ukrainian public that he signed the legislation needed for the EU visa-free regime. “We fulfilled the technical conditions and anticipate a decision by the EU regarding the prospects of introducing the visa-free regime,” he said.

Zenon Zawada: There’s tension between the EU and Ukrainian government leaders, who have shown that they want to do the absolute minimum to satisfy EU requirements and do not want to fully cooperating with their Western counterparts. It’s also unusual for the president to have signed the legislation without the parliamentary speaker’s signature. This resistance to genuine reforms is contributing to the current Ukraine fatigue that is increasingly apparent among EU leaders.