European Commission Proposes to Drop Visas for Ukraine Citizens

The European Commission proposed on Wednesday to lift visa requirements for the citizens of Ukraine for travel to the Schengen area.

The proposal by the EU executive to the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament comes after the Commission said in December that Ukraine successfully met all benchmarks under the Visa Liberalisation Action Plan presented to the country's authorities in November 2010 

Once the proposal is approved, Ukrainian citizens with biometric passports will be entitled to visa-free travel to the Schengen area for stays of up to 90 days in any 180-day period for business, tourist or family purposes. The visa exemption does not provide for the right to work in the EU, the Commission said in a statement.

EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos commented in the statement that the proposed lifting of visa requirements for short-stay travel "is the result of the success of the Ukrainian government in achieving far-reaching and difficult reforms in the Justice and Home Affairs area and beyond, impacting on areas such as the rule of law and justice reform."

The EU-Ukraine dialogue on visa liberalisation is a process separate from the negotiations between Brussels and Kiev on the association agreement, which took place between 2007 and 2011 and led to the signature of the agreement in 2014.