The European Union may suspend visa-free travel with Ukraine after the country’s Constitutional Court violated the government’s anti-corruption commitments to Europe, according to Mykola Tochytsky, head of the Ukrainian mission to the EU.
In a letter to Olga Stefanyshyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, obtained and quoted by local media on Oct. 29, Tochytsky said that the decision of the Constitutional Court to eliminate the Ukrainian electronic asset declaration system undermines the power of anti-corruption institutions, and thus may lead to the suspension of visa-free travel with Europe.
Tochytsky pointed out that Ukraine committed to launch a register of officials’ asset disclosures and implement anti-corruption reforms when it entered the agreement with the EU that secured visa-free travel between the countries.
But after Ukraine’s Constitutional Court ruled to deprive the National Agency for Preventing Corruption (NAPC) of most of its powers, the European Commission raised concerns, according to Tochytsky. Apart from a suspension of visa-free travel, the ruling may also disrupt lending by the International Monetary Fund and Ukraine’s integration with European energy and digital markets, he said.
So far, the EU has not taken any official actions in response to the Constitutional Court ruling. However, in his letter, Tochytsky said his concerns were based upon unofficial information he apparently received from contacts in the EU.
To curb the detrimental effects of the ruling, Tochytsky proposed to amend the Ukrainian Constitution and allow Ukraine’s parliament to create governmental agencies with special status. It is not entirely clear what he meant by that. However, he said that the absence of this status allowed the Constitutional Court to declare the NAPC’s authority to monitor and check officials’ declarations and lifestyle unconstitutional.
Stefanyshyna confirmed that she indeed received such a letter from Tochytsky but warned that it shouldn’t be taken to mean that the EU is about to revoke the visa-free regime.
“It’s an exchange of thoughts,” she told the Kyiv Post.
Reactions
Both in Ukraine and abroad, negative reactions to the Constitutional Court ruling have been swift.
Ambassadors representing the G7, an economic group of seven major developed countries, raised concerns about the Constitutional Court’s decision to “undo the anti-corruption reforms.”
“Too much progress has been made, Ukraine must not go back to the past,” they said on Twitter on Oct. 29.
Because of the havoc caused by the ruling, President Volodymyr Zelensky stepped in and called a closed-door meeting of the National Security and Defense Council to discuss the consequences of the decision.
During a briefing on Oct. 29, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that, although the Constitutional Court’s ruling undermines relations with Ukraine’s European partners, the country can still reverse it.
Stefanyshyna said that Ukraine wants to minimize the impact of the ruling and continue integration with the EU, adding that anti-corruption reforms are just one of the pillars that define Ukraine-EU relations. Stefanyshyna also told the Kyiv Post that Tochytsky addressed the letter directly to her, not to the public, so she doesn’t know who leaked the information to the media.
