The meeting was attended by representatives of the Twinning Projects of the State Border Guards Service of Ukraine and of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine, officials of the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine, the Border Agencies of Germany, Po

The meeting was attended by representatives of the Twinning Projects of the State Border Guards Service of Ukraine and of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine, officials of the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine, the Border Agencies of Germany, Poland and Lithuania, and a representative of the National Agency of Ukraine on Civil Service.

At the beginning of the meeting, the First Deputy Head of the State Border Guard Service, Vasyl Servaituk notified that the main achievement of the joint working process is the introduction of visa-free regime between European Union and Ukraine. Owing to visa-free regime, having been started from 11^th of June this year, the citizens of Ukraine have possibility to travel to the Schengen countries as per simplified procedure.

Beyond that, the Lieutenant General stressed on the fact which is not least important and that is an achievement of consensus – building in the field of establishment of Interagency Working Group on the coordination of Integrated Border Management issues, as a consultative advisory body to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.

Such result was achieved by means of hard work in getting acquainted the European practices, in particular, Finland, Germany, Poland and Lithuania, as well as further discussion between the key subjects of Integrated Border Management, the representatives of the EU Delegation in Ukraine and the European missions EUAM and EUBAM.

Needless to say, the Administration of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine takes responsibility on ensuring the activity of this Interagency Working Group of the high level.

Moreover, Vasyl Servatiuk notified that by common efforts a draft of Instruction on monitoring and evaluation of the operational service activity of the State Border Guard Service and an evaluation experts’ and trainers’ training course assessment were elaborated which correspond to the Schengen evaluation mechanism. Certain officials of the State Border Guard Service have already passed through the training of evaluation and monitoring methodology.

Further the participants of the Steering Committee Meeting briefed the audience on practical results of the project, presented the financial report, and discussed recommendations of its further realization and improvement of the activity of the State Border Guard Service and Integrated Border Management in general.

In particular, the Twinning Project Leader Thomas Osterroth underlined that the first Component “Assistance in monitoring and evaluation of the new IBM Strategy and Action Plan implementation” is the base for further implementation of best practices in Ukrainian Border Agency and namely based on its realization the next ones will be determined.

 “We started our project 12 months ago. The main goal of the project is to approximate the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine in the field of Integrated Border Management, Border control and stolen vehicles detection towards the European standards. The passed period could be considered to be our joint success. We identified the future goals, considered all recommendations, and as already can be notified; some of them started their practical work. I’m convinced that the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine is on the right way”, - as stated by Thomas Osterroth.

Summarizing the Meeting, the First Deputy Head of the State Border Guard Service Vasyl Servatiuk stated that the mentioned both sides’ achievement is the outcome of the fruitful cooperation between the EU experts and Ukrainian specialists, who, during the time of performed activities, also improved their mutual understanding and effectiveness of work. The fulfillment of the benchmarks proves the will and the ability of the National Agency to conduct the real reforms towards the Association with the European Union.