"Visas will be cheap, multiple-entry, and easily accessible. We envisage that some categories - in particular, entrepreneurs and young people - will be able to enter Poland without visas at all," Leszek Miller said in Warsaw after talks with Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. Miller stressed that Poland is open to all proposals from Ukraine in order to make the visa regime flexible. According to him, Ukraine is also ready to consider liberalizing the visa regime for Polish citizens.
Poland is expected to become a member of the European Union in 2004. One of the main conditions that Warsaw must fulfill is the introduction of a visa regime with its eastern neighbors. This process is scheduled for the summer of 2003.
Meanwhile, as Deutsche Welle reports, the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Lviv said that Polish visas will start being issued to Ukrainians as early as April. Most likely, the consulate suggests, starting from that month the Polish side will be opening both short-term and long-term visas so that the Ukrainian-Polish border is not empty in early July. According to the head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry's representative office in Lviv, Vyacheslav Voynarovsky, the visa fee will likely range from 10 to 12 euros, but the final price will be determined and subsequently announced by the Polish side.
The procedure for crossing the Polish border is currently carried out without restrictions, according to the old rules. However, the consulate is awaiting instructions from the Polish Foreign Ministry, which will actually determine the new operating procedure and the visa fee.
The head of the international relations department of the Lviv Regional State Administration, Taras Voznyak, suggests that students and businessmen who have joint Ukrainian-Polish enterprises will be issued multiple-entry visas. It is quite possible, he assumes, that if the Polish side does not have time to process visas, then for convenience consular points in the form of a special box will be moved closer to the border.
And yet, as diplomats emphasize, all hypotheses about the upcoming visa regime between the two countries, visa prices, and so on remain only guesses for now. The final word must be said by Poland, which, judging by publications in the local press, does not yet know what to say itself.