EU Parliament to Approve Ukraine Visa-Free Regime Suspension Mechanism Next Week

The European Parliament is expected to approve the mechanism on suspending planned visa-free regimes with Ukraine, Georgia and Turkey next week, a parliamentary source told RIA Novosti Thursday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Earlier in the day, the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament and the European Commission ended their long-running dispute on a visa-free regime with the three countries by striking a deal on emergency suspension mechanisms to be triggered in case of overwhelming migration from these countries. The deal now awaits approval by the former two bodies.

"It is expected that this will happen next week at the EU parliament's plenary session. The Council of the European Union will then deal with it," the source said.

In November, the Council of the European Union took a preliminary decision on visa liberalization for Ukraine. Country's President Petro Poroshenko welcomed the decision and called on the European Union to complete the process of granting the visa-free regime for Ukraine without any further delay. EU source have, however, stated that the regime is unlikely to be implemented before 2017.

The proposal for the visa waiver for Georgia was issued by the European Commission on March 9 since the country met the conditions for the visa requirement exemption. On July 7, the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs also recommended to grant visa-free travel to the residents of Ukraine, Georgia and Kosovo. The process was then delayed by negotiations between the European Parliament and the Council on the visa suspension mechanism.

Turkey has yet to fulfill a number of EU benchmarks before qualifying for a visa-free regime with the bloc.