Estonian parliament's EU Affairs Committee visiting Ukraine

TALLINN – The European Union Affairs Committee of the Estonian parliament is beginning a three-day visit to Ukraine on Monday.

Chairman of the committee Toomas Vitsut said that one of the aims of the visit was to encourage Ukraine to continue with extensive reforms, first of all, the judicial reform and measures to reduce corruption.

"Ukraine has expressed its wish to integrate with the European Union and started extensive political and economic reforms to achieve that," Vitsut said. He pointed out as a successful example of reforms that Ukraine had met the conditions for establishing visa-free travel regime. On March 2, 2017, EU ambassadors confirmed, on behalf of the Council, the agreement on visa liberalization for Ukrainians. The agreement provides for visa-free travel for Ukrainian citizens when traveling to the EU for a stay of 90 days in any 180-day period. Now the regulation will be submitted to the European Parliament for a vote at first reading, and subsequently to the Council for adoption.

Committee member Kalle Palling said that Ukraine had to purposefully continue with the reforms it had started. "In order to ensure that the EU and its member states will keep the promises made to Ukraine without establishing additional conditions later, Ukraine and other partner countries have to meet their obligations and conduct the necessary reforms," Palling said. "Estonia is ready to help in every way. We also expect the EU to create additional possibilities for that and hope that the free trade agreement between the EU and Ukraine will be implemented as soon as possible. Naturally, these reforms are a challenge that requires great efforts, but there is no better solution."

Palling also pointed out that in three years almost 10,000 people, including 2,000 civilians, had perished in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and nearly 23,400 had been injured.