Piotr Kaźmierkiewicz, expert at the Institute of Public Affairs (Poland), suggests that the EU should revisit its visa policy toward the neighbor states. The expert rises up this issue in his article for European Voice.
Author suggests that the EU should stop treating visa-free travel as a “carrot” in talks with neighbouring states. Piotr Kaźmierkiewicz stresses that EU’s current policy with regard to its eastern neighbours “holds ordinary people hostage to an evaluation of their state’s administrative capacity and their politicians’ commitment to EU standards”. The author argues that the resistance of some EU member states to the prospect of visa-free movement weakens the trust of ordinary Ukrainians and Moldovans in the EU.
In his article the author mentions the examples of Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and the Baltic states which the Schengen members waived visa requirements for in in the first half of the 1990s. This move was made before these countries’ formal process of association with the EU began, and before progress was achieved in combating illegal migration and cross-border criminality.
The full text of the article you can read here
Source: PASOS
