More than two million Ukrainians have traveled to Europe without visas since the visa-free regime between Ukraine and the EU came into force two years ago, the Ukrainian Mission to the EU announced on May 11.
“It is through its citizens that Ukraine has begun real integration into the European Union,” the mission stated in a Facebook post.
The European Union granted Ukrainians visa-free travel on May 11, 2017. A month later, on June 11, the regime was launched.
Since then, Ukrainians have made over 33 million trips to 30 European countries that implemented the agreement. This includes non-EU states that are members of the Schengen Zone, but does not include Great Britain and Ireland.
In its Facebook post, the mission said that Ukraine’s integration into the European Union is impossible without the development of human contacts.
“We are pleased to take pride in these results, which have opened absolutely new opportunities for Ukrainian citizens to travel, obtain new knowledge, establish new contacts, find friends,” the post reads.
“The main thing is that, with every trip, Ukrainian citizens travel home with new knowledge and contacts that help the state to make the processes of European integration irreversible.”
The EU granted Ukraine the visa-free regime after a long process with numerous delays and bureaucratic hurdles. The agreement gave every Ukrainian with a biometric passport the ability to travel to 30 European countries for a period of 90 days every 180 days without receiving a visa or submitting any documents prior to the trip.
