Ukraine's parliament on Tuesday approved a key anti-corruption bill that Kiev hopes will pave the way for visa-free travel to EU countries this year.
But the measures come as the 28-nation bloc is busy setting up fences to keep out new migrants and turning to populist politicians who vow to keep their countries from being flooded by those fleeing economic hardship and war.
Conflict-riven Ukraine's new legislation establishes public oversight over the assets of both senior and lower-level officials and their relatives.
They now have to file electronic declarations of their income and holdings and face criminal liability for any inaccurate or falsified information.
The data will crucially be open online to anyone's scrutiny - a level of transparency that the European Union (EU) believes can move Ukraine closer in line with international standards.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Saturday vetoed an earlier version of the bill that pushed back the asset declarations until 2017.
"Parliament did everything for Ukrainians to travel to Europe without visas this year," Poroshenko tweeted after lawmakers passed the measure by an overwhelming 278 votes to two. Ukraine's 2014 pro-EU revolution was driven in part by widespread discontent over the corruption that enriched senior officials in a succession of previous governments.
Kiev's pro-Western leaders accuse the ousted Russian-backed leadership of embezzling billions of dollars (euros) from the state budget and enjoying lavish lifestyles at the expense of the working poor.
The former Soviet country had spent years on laborious negotiations aimed at letting its roughly 40 million citizens avoid the costly and time-consuming procedure of obtaining a visa from an EU state.
Many Ukrainians report being denied permission to enter, and for which no reason is given.
The number of such incidents has soared since Europe last year began to struggle with the burden of dealing with hundreds of thousands of migrants from poorer countries and refugees from war-riven Syria and Iraq.
Comments
Comments are closed.