EU Border Moves To Ukraine

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia -- From December 21, the citizens of Slovakia will be able to cross the borders with all neighbouring countries except for Ukraine at any place and without any checks.

Jozef Buček, Schengen commissioner
This is the result of an informal agreement reached two weeks ago by the EU Council of ministers, assessing the evaluation report on the preparedness of candidate countries for accession to the Schengen area.

Though the final decision will be taken early in December, Slovakia is certain to become a member of the enlarged Schengen area before Christmas, along with Slovenia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, the Czech Republic and Malta.

However, last year there was no reason for celebrations.

Then, the European Commission announced that the enlargement of the pan-European border-free zone might be postponed to 2009 due to the insufficient preparedness of candidate countries and Slovakia was stated as the worst example.

In response to this criticism, the Slovak government established a team headed by Smer-SD nominee, Jozef Buček, Schengen commissioner and the State Secretary of the Ministry of Interior.

This team prepared a crisis action plan for the solving of 169 problems, which was approved by Schengen member states early this year.

The change over the year in the evaluation of Slovakia’s preparedness for Schengen indicates that the efforts of the crisis team were successful.

It should also be mentioned that the efforts would have had no effect if the old member states of the Schengen zone had not prepared for their new colleagues, as one year ago it was not only Slovakia and the Czech Republic that were behind in their preparations.

The preparation for the accession to the Schengen zone cost almost 64 million EUR, which represents two billion Slovak crowns at the current exchange rate.

Four-fifths of the costs were covered by the Schengen Transition Fund and the reminder was paid from the state budget of the Slovak Republic.

Source: eTrend