Ukraine came one big step closer to meeting the requirements for a visa-free regime with European Union with parliament's adoption of four laws on May 13, all meeting the 28-nation bloc's list of demands.
With their passage, Ukraine has completed the first stage of preparing for the day when Ukrainians won’t need visas to travel throughout Europe.
“When the decision about the second stage will be made, it will mean that by the end of this year Ukraine will get a visa-free regime,” said interim President and parliament chairman Oleksandr Turchynov, speaking to the lawmakers in parliament on May 13.
From the second attempt, the parliament adopted the law that bans any discrimination of the citizens and another one that regulates the work of the parliament’s Commissioner for Human’s Rights.
Yet another law adopted on May 13 regulates the help that refugees can get in Ukraine. The law expanded the list of reasons that make a person applicable for getting protection from the state. Now, the victims of the violence in international or internal conflict or in continuous violation of the human’s rights can apply for the state protection and refugee status.
The parliament has also adopted an anti-corruption law. Among other innovations, it establishes responsibility for filing an untruthful tax declaration. It also provides additional protection for the people reporting the cases of corruption.
The session day was marked with several arguments between the lawmakers.
Turchynov stopped the speech of Petro Symonenko, the head of Communists’ Party, turning off his microphone. Symonenko was speaking of the deadly clashes between Ukrainian army and insurgents in Mariupol on May 9, claiming that it was the army that started the conflict.
“You are lying impertinently,” said Turchynov and ignored Symonenko’s demands to finish his speech.
In response, other lawmakers of the Communists’s Party accused Turchynov of violating the rules of the parliament, depriving a member of his right to speak.
Turchynov, however, didn’t stop at this and promised to ask the Ministry of Justice to investigate the Communists’ Party role in the separatist uprising in the east, as “many of the party’s members are known to actively participate in the separatist unrest.”
Turchynov has also condemned the speech of Party of Regions’ member Mykola Levchenko, who spoke out in defense of the illegal separatist referendum that several cities in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts held on May 11.
“Don’t call people in the east separatists. They voted against you (the authorities). We (Party of Regions) demand that you listen to the referendum, stop the punitive operation in the east, and start negotiations. People want propositions. Offer them the conditions that will make them want to stay in this country,” said Levchenko, adding that Turchynov in particular was responsible for the bloody conflict in Ukraine’s east.
In response, Turchynov accused Levchenko’s Party of Region of backing separatists.
Kyiv Post editor Olga Rudenko can be reached at [email protected]
