AfD Official: Too Early to Abolish Visas Between EU, 'Unstable' Ukraine, Georgia

The European Union should not introduce a visa-free regime for the citizens of "unstable" countries such as Georgia and Ukraine until their political systems become democratic, the chairman of Germany’s right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the state of Mecklenburg–West Pomerania told Sputnik.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Earlier in the month, EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos told Sputnik that the European Union could grant Kiev and Tbilisi visa-free regime as soon as in the spring of 2017.

"Currently we can see an upsurge of migrants from East. In my opinion we should not introduce a visa-free regime with very unstable countries at all. We can think about such a move in the long-term, when these countries actually become stable democracies," Leif-Erik Holm said, commenting the potential introduction of a visa-free regime between the European Union and Georgia and Ukraine.

The politician added that the two nations should exert a lot of efforts to reach the required level of stability.

Both Ukraine and Georgia have been striving for reaching a visa-free regime with the 28-nation bloc for years and have fulfilled a number of the EU requirements to reach the goal.

On Thursday, the European Parliament approved the completion of the legislative process to cancel the visa regime with the European Union for citizens of Ukraine and Georgia. Later in the day, the European Council said that the EU leaders would finalize procedures on granting Kiev and Tbilisi a visa-free regime after the adoption of its suspension mechanism.