The visa-free regime with the EU one year on Jakub Benedyczak, Leonid Litra, Krzysztof Mrozek Batory Foundation, Warsaw/Kyiv, May 2015
For more a year now, Moldova has enjoyed a visa waiver and citizens who hold a biometric passport are able to enter the EU without a visa. Almost half a million Moldovans have made use of this opportunity. At the same time, the number of detected irregularities was insignificant both compared to the number of bona fide travelers and other third country nationals. In real number, however, the migration paths did not change significantly – all the Moldovan asylum seekers from 2014 would fit into one airliner.
This shows that if the conditions set by the EU are met, as they were in the case of Moldova, and are now also being done in the case of Ukraine and Georgia, visa liberalization does not represent a danger to the European Union. Furthermore, a third country receiving a visa-free regime has undergone reforms, is better governed and becomes an even more reliable partner for the Union
