You're reading: EU afraid of risks due to Donetsk situation, may affect possible visa-free regime with Ukraine

The EU is afraid of the risks associated with the ongoing situation in eastern Ukraine which could affect the prospects of granting a visa-free regime to Ukraine, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klimkin has said.

“At the same time, there is a political component in this issue [of providing the visa-free regime]. Donbas as well as people related to what is happening there have not disappeared – I mean pro-Russian militants. So, Europeans are now asking: whether we will be able to build up an effective barrier against them so that they could not get a new biometric passport. I hope we were able to convince the EU that we can fully control the process,” Klimkin said in an interview with the New Times.

According to him, Ukraine is implementing crucial reforms.

“Many things, unfortunately, have not been done at all or have been recently done. The classic example discussed in all our media: the question is with an internal identification document, our internal Ukrainian passport,” Klimkin said.

According to him, the degree of security offered by the internal passport does not differ from the old Soviet passports.

“Of course such a situation is not the best way to convince the European Union that we have become better. But the process of introducing new generation passports has been started. For instance, now we check how databases in the country interact, how the migration service works. We are confident that by the end of the year we will launch a new system of identification. Thus, we’ll open the way for a visa-free regime,” Klimkin said.