June 16, the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Cecilia Malmstrom and members of the delegation met with EWB in Kiev, during her visit to Kyiv. The meeting was held before the annual ministerial meeting of Ukraine-EU on the level of Ministers for Home Affairs and Justice.
The meeting was devoted to assessments of the
visa dialogue progress between
and the EU and in particular the
Action Plan on Visa Liberalisation. EWB has presented its assessments of such
process (see here) and the subject of that meeting was to discuss some details
of presented report. The European Commissioner and members of her delegation
were interested in estimates made by the
governmental draft laws that brings Ukraine closer to visa-free regime with the
EU and some specific directions such as: anti-corruption policy, combating
human trafficking, human rights issues in refugee and asylum issues.
In casual
conversation Ukrainian experts shared their impressions on the efforts of the
Government, the President and Parliament on these issues, trying to adhere to
objectivity and balance in the estimates during the conversation.
The
representatives of the EWB raised the issue they were interested in. During the
meeting Cecilia Malmström said that the European Commissions’ first official
report on implementation of the Action Plan on Visa Liberalisation by
issued in September. It was previously expected that this report would be
prepared at the beginning of the summer, but the complexity and novelty of the
process from the both sides has led to some delays in preparing the report.
As to the
issue of publicity of the Action Plan on Visa Liberalisation (this document has
not been published on official Web sites of Ukraine and the EU yet), the European
Commissioner said that the EU Action Plan has the status of the working
document and according to the internal rules is not a subject to publication on
the official web-sites. At the same time the document, according to the Ms Malmstrom
words, is neither secret nor confidential. The Ukrainian government has the
right to publish it on their official websites, as it was done by the
Government of Moldova.
The participants
of the meeting expressed satisfaction with the degree of openness that allows
civil society representatives to convey their views to the formal structures at
a high level, helping officials to obtain comprehensive and unbiased
information from the lips of independent experts.
