Chairman of Ukrainian Parliament’s Committee on Human Rights: Ignoring issue of Roma people in Ukraine may disrupt visa-free regime

The failure to comply with the strategy for protection and integration of the Roma national minority into Ukrainian society could undermine the visa liberalization.

This was stated by Hryhoriy Nemyria, the Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s Committee on Human Rights, the Human Rights Information Centre correspondent reports.

He recalled that the strategy adopted in 2013 was one of the final legislative stages of the action plan on visa liberalization. However, no means have been ever budgeted for implementation of this strategy.

“We know that there is a group of countries, which seeks any opportunity for suspension, including of the visa regime liberalization with the third countries. A lot of things can be used for that. The failure to comply with the strategy and the action plan is one of them,” the Committee’s chairman said.

“The main complaint about Ukraine now is the inefficiency of the anti-corruption institutions. However, the EU can also recall about the national minorities, as well as about the situation with the internally displaced persons because they pose the migration risks and increase pressure on the countries of the Schengen area because of poor governance or chronic underfunding,” Hryhoriy Nemyria noted.

He regretted that the state did not allocate funds for the integration of Roma community.

“When a private donor, the International Renaissance Foundation, has an annual program of Roma integration worth USD 500,000, while the state allocates no funds at all, it also raises some conclusions,” the politician said.

He is convinced that further lack of integration of the Roma into the Ukrainian society can lead to similar debacles of Roma houses as happened in the village of Loshchynivka in Odesa region following the murder of a 9-year-old girl.

Earlier, the non-governmental organizations asked Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman to provide funds to finance the action plan of the Roma integration strategy in the amount of UAH 10 million in the state budget of Ukraine for 2017.