The Ukrainian authorities should immediately start printing biometric foreign passports to avoid possible complications when issuing them after the introduction of a visa-free regime with EU, Director of the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation Oleksandr Sushko has said.
“The state should immediately start issuing biometric passports so
that there will be at least a year for citizens to get new passport,”
Sushko said at the press conference on Thursday.
According to him, the struggle to decide who will get the money
intended for biometric passports has led to the fact that even though
it’s possible to start issuing the passports, they still aren’t being
made. Besides, according to him, visa-free regime is only for people
with biometric passports.
“Today there are no owners of biometric passports in Ukraine. And if
tomorrow EU introduces a visa-free regime for Ukraine, there will be no
one to take advantage of it,” the expert said.
He said that citizens have about 10 million foreign passports, and
1.5 million passports used to be issued every year. Thus, if everybody
suddenly decides to change their passports for new ones, there will be
huge lines and “the current situation will seem like a piece of cake.”
Sushko noted that an EU expert report on Ukraine’s compliance with
the requirements for introducing visa-free regime is expected in spring
2015, thus visa-free regime with the EU can be introduced already in
summer 2015 provided Ukrainian party meets all the requirements.
According to the expert, possible problematic issues of the forthcoming report include borders issue.
“Additional requirements regarding borders are expected,” he said and
added that current situation in Donbas showed that an “irresponsible
approach to the eastern border didn’t pay off.”
