Europese Commissie wil onderhandelingen starten met Oekraïne voor korte-termijnvisa (en)
The Commission has adopted a recommendation to the Council in order to authorize to open negotiations between the European Community and Ukraine for the conclusion of an agreement on the facilitation of issuance of short-stay visas. The scope of the agreement will be limited to short-stay visas, envisaged for no longer than three months in the Schengen territory. It is expected to cover in particular arrangements on visa fees, definition of short standard duration for processing visa applications, simplification of documentary evidence to be presented in order to obtain a visa and definition of criteria for issuing multiple-entry visas for some categories of persons.
The adoption of the recommendation, at the end of August, meets the considerable interest of Ukraine in obtaining visa facilitation for its citizens and comes in line with the EU Ukraine Policy Action Plan, which includes a constructive dialogue on visa facilitation between the EU and Ukraine and the negotiation of such an agreement. The negotiating directives contained in the recommendation should adopted by the Council in the near future. Negotiations on visa facilitation will be launched before the next EU-Ukraine Summit to be held on 1st December 2005 and shall go in parallel with the on-going negotiations for an EC-Ukraine readmission agreement.
It should be noted that the agreement is mainly intended to facilitate the visa issuing procedures for Ukrainian citizens entering the Schengen area as on 31 March 2005 the President of Ukraine, Mr Yushchenko, signed the decree "On Temporary Introduction of the visa-free regime for citizens of the Member States of the European Union and the Swiss Confederation" according to which the citizens of the EU and the Swiss Confederation are exempted from the visa obligation until the 1st September 2005. Furthermore, on 28 July 2005, a new decree was signed by President Yushchenko, which introduced a permanent visa- free regime of travel to Ukraine from 1st September 2005.