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Public initiative “Europe without Barriers” presents the results of the fourth wave of public monitoring on issuing visas by the EU Member States to Ukrainian citizens, conducted with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation.

Previous waves were conducted in 2006, 2008 and 2009. In general monitoring of EU visa policy and individual member states is implemented by the founder organizations of "Europe without Barriers" since 2003.

The above survey results were presented by representatives of the "Europe without Barriers": Oleksandr Sushko, Oksana Gyrych, Iryna Sushko, Volodymyr Kipen, Denys Kuzmin, Andriy Kryzhevskyi, Andriy Lepak.

With the result of study, consular representatives were presented with the certificates of consular services’ quality, indicating the rating positions.

On behalf of the International Renaissance Foundation, the European Programme Director Iryna Solonenko welcomed the participants of roundtable.

The representatives of Government and Parliament of Ukraine took part in the event.

In his speech, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klimkin said that Ukraine hoped to receive the Action Plan on visa-free regime from the EU for Ukraine-EU summit that would be held on November 22. He informed that the current political dialogue was conducted in parallel on several lines. Primarily it is a "visa dialogue" that is to be transferred to the operational stage by adopting the Action Plan with an exhaustive list of relevant requirements, criteria and standards; and secondly, this is a dialogue with the aim to make changes and additions to the existing Visa Facilitation Agreement (VFA), which refers to the expansion of privileged categories of citizens; and thirdly, the negotiations are carried on to expand the scope of small border traffic, which operates in the regions adjoined to the borders of the EU member states.

The Head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee of Ukraine on European Integration Borys Tarasyuk focused on the parliamentary dimension of approximation towards visa-free regime with the EU. He noted that after the Committee in collaboration with the "Europe without Barriers" conducted parliamentary hearings on visa topics on May 23, the Parliament adopted the Law on Protection of Personal Data. The relevant CoE Convention on data protection and the CoE Convention against human trafficking were also ratified. At the same time, Borys Tarasyuk noted about the lack of political will from the government and the parliamentary majority to adopt and implement legislation on combating corruption and the establishment of the State Migration Service.

On behalf on the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine the counselor Ireneusz Fidos welcomed the participants.

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Finland in Ukraine Christer Mikkelson noted the importance of the presented research. He also noted that it will help his diplomatic mission to improve the quality of consular services and address the shortcomings, particularly those that were discovered by research.

The Head of Consular and Visa Section of the Embassy of Latvia in Ukraine Dace Arakelyana noted that even official data from the European Commission may be inaccurate, as it actually happened. It is also happened to the data of Latvian Consular and Visa section in Kyiv in the case of refusals’ level. According to the Consul’s words, the number of refusals has "grown" to over 10% because of the fact that the number of applications, submitted by children with child’s travel document, has been mistakenly attributed as those rejected. The actual number of rejections by this Consulate does not exceeded 3,5% in 2009.

The roundtable was attended by senior representatives of 14 of the 20 surveyed consular services which is a high indicator that shows the proper project reputation and high level of confidence to "Europe without Barriers" as to unbiased and professional NGO.

This is, without exaggeration, the first public event in Ukraine on visa and migration issues, which was attended by such a large and representative group of heads and deputy heads of consular offices of EU Member States.This, as to organizers, is an important step in building a productive atmosphere of transparency, openness and trustful dialogue between the consulates and the Ukrainian society.

Particularly, except the representatives above, the Consul General of Hungary in Kiev Hegedus Gabor, the Vice-Consul of the Slovak Consulate Michal Greno, the Director of the Consular Service of the Estonian Embassy Tanel Joks, the Deputy Head of Mission and Consulate of Denmark Dorothee Petersen, the vice Consul of Austria Astrid Adam, Counsellor of the Embassy of Greece Georgeos Alamanos, the Vice Consul of Sweden Isabela Persson, the Consul of Romania Stefan Oprja, Vice-Consul of Lithuania Jurate Usevisiute, the Consul of Slovenia Primoz Krizaj, the Consul of Finland Vappu Pajala, the Consul of the Czech Republic Ani Shaginjanova, Inspector on visa issues of Portugese Embassy Pedro Maros Liaison took part (in most cases – active) in the event.

What was investigated?

The issuing visa procedure by the consular services of twenty EU Member States and Schengen area in Ukraine that is: Austria, Belgium, Greece (3 consulates in Kyiv, Odesa and Mariupol), Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands,
Germany¹, Poland (5 consulates² in Kiev, Lviv, Odessa, Lutsk and Kharkiv), Portugal, Slovakia (2 consulates in Kyiv and Uzhgorod), Slovenia, Hungary (3 consulates in Kyiv, Uzhgorod and Beregove), Finland, France, Czech Republic (3 consulates in Kyiv, Donetsk and Lviv), Sweden, were investigated. Total: 31 consular offices in nine cities of Ukraine, including 20 of them in Kyiv.

Not investigated: countries not belonging to the Schengen zone (UK, Ireland, Romania, Bulgaria, Cyprus), non-EU Member States (Norway, Switzerland, Iceland) countries which do not have consular offices in Ukraine (Malta, Luxembourg) and small European countries that have delegated their consular functions to other states (Monaco, Liechtenstein, Andorra, San Marino, Vatican).

There are main conclusions:

• VFA functions better than in 2008, but compared to the year 2009 further significant progress is not achieved. The potential of positive impact of the Agreement is close to exhaustion. Conditions of long-term and multiple visa issuing, mentioned in the VFA, do not allow satisfying the needs of persons requiring regular trips, sometimes without the artificial construction of a set of accompanying documents.

• Introduction of the EU Visa Code by April 5, 2010 has led to adjustments, generally positive, but not very significant, to the visa practice of consular offices. Full unification of application forms on issuing visa, increase the number of multiple entry visas with validity for 6 months or more, and therefore some reduction in the number of multiple entry visas for short-term validity are among the positive impacts.

• About 12% of all visas, issued to citizens of Ukraine have about one year term of validity. Another 9% of visas are valid for six months or (rarely) 4-5 months. But visas valid for 2, 3, 5 years, are still rare (less than 1%)

• The reduction of time spent in queues is fixed – mostly thanks to the external service providers (visa centers) – but simultaneously increases the cost of visa procedure.A quarter of applicants didn’t stay in queues during the visa procedure (24,9%), another 30% spent in queues less than half an hour (in total). At the same time almost 10% of respondents were waiting in queues more than 3 hours.

• The share of free visas stabilized at about 30%. The procedure, which involves the payment for the external service providers (15% of respondents pointed out such conditions) isn’t not perceived by the applicants as free of charge.

• The share of visa refusals, in average, stabilized at a relatively low level (4,6% according to official data, and 7% according to data of research), but with preservation of a substantial (five or more times) the difference between individual consular posts that can’t be explained by objective circumstances. This practice indicates the presence of "political component" in working process of Consular offices.

• In most cases the duration of expectations does not exceed 10 days from the first contact with the consulate to obtain a decision. But in the case of Italy, Denmark, France, this term is often much greater, reaching 20-30 days.

• The term of review visa application within 10 calendar days, set by the VFA, follows more than 80% of cases, which indicates a definite improvement over previous years.
• The applicants note the absence of significant changes regarding the number of requested documents

Rating of Schengen Consulates According to the rating, which is synthesized from all studied com-ponents of Quality Score of consular services, twenty national consular services of EU member states and Schengen area located as follows (right): Consular Service of Hungary, rep-resented by three consulates in Ukraine – in Kyiv, Uzhgorod and Beregove was recognized the best because of all indexes in set. The worst is the Consular Service of Greece, which is also represented by three institutions – in Kyiv, Odessa and Mariupol. Methodology of rating points is attached (in a separate release)	*Rating*	*Country*
	1	Hungary
	2	Lithuania
	3	Estonia
	4	Slovakia
	5	Slovenia
	6	Poland
	7	Sweden
	8	Germany
	9	the Netherlands
	10	Austria
	11	Latvia
	12	Denmark
	13	Finland
	14	France
	15	Belgium
	16	Czech Republic
	17	Portugal
	18	Italy
	19	Spain
	20	Greece

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¹ The Consulate of Germany in Kyiv only. The Consulate General in Donetsk, opened in 2009, as of August 2010 hasn’t the visa issuance yet.

² The sixth Polish Consulate in Vinnytsya, which started operating only in 2010, isn’t covered by the research.