Maryana Kuzio is a European integration and Visa Liberalisation expert at the NGO “Europe without Barriers” (September 2011- April 2016). She holds an MA in International Relations, from Ivan Franko National University in Lviv, specialising in European Politics and MA in five Universities of Europe (Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary research and Studies on Eastern Europe) at the University of Bologna. Main fields of her activities are: research and monitoring aimed at providing independent expertise of domestic reforms in the areas of document security, migration and readmission, public order and security and fundamental rights. She has practical experience of advocating and lobbying necessary internal reforms in Ukraine, as well as carrying out advocacy campaigns in the European Union’s Member States directed at abolishing the EU visa requirements for Ukraine and the whole Eastern Partnership region.
Though Ukraine has never been so close to getting a visa-free regime with the EU, till recently the process could still be delayed or even disrupted. The EU has been taking the final decision not only based on technical criteria envisaged by the Visa Liberalization Action Plan (VLAP)[1] but also taking into account the factors…
