The emergence of European preoccupations related to public order and security, on the one hand, shows the incapacity of the authorities in Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia to effectively fight domestic crime. On the other hand, the same thing shows the criminals’ ability to exteriorize without difficulty their activity in Europe, through the visa-free regime, political pundit Dionis Cenușa noted in a feature article for IPN Agency.
The expert said the largest number of alerts issued by the national authorities through the Schengen Information System refer to Georgia, including against the size of the population. This way, over 250 requests for arrest or extradition concerned Georgian citizens, a similar number involved the Ukrainian citizens, and under 150 alerts were linked to the Moldovan citizens.
According to Dionis Cenușa, against the dimensions of the population, the statistical data show the most negative tendencies for Georgia, with the applications for asylum and high indices of integration of Georgian citizens into criminal activities in Europe prevailing.
Ukraine can be examined as the second difficult case, mainly owing to the military operations in Donbass, generated by the separatist forces supported by Russia. This explains the high number of applications for asylum submitted by Ukrainians (about 10,000 annually) or the smuggling of munitions coming from military activities in Donbass.
Even if the technical indicators seem to favor Moldova, the country achieved poor results in fighting corruption, similar to the data for Ukraine, commented the pundit.
Besides reanimating the visa-free regime, the intensification of cooperation with the European institutions helps the Georgian government that is under the influence of oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili to gain credibility.
In the case of Ukraine, such major objectives as strengthening of statehood, security and functionality of the state prevail. These also overlap as regards the liberalization of visas, primarily when the fight against corruption is supported.
The Moldovan authorities focus on the post-electoral re-positioning of the party led by Vladimir Plahotniuc, which prevails over the European objections concerning governance and corruption.
Even if the anti-oligarchic forces or civil society in Chisinau use the visa waiver suspension mechanism to emphasize the authorities’ involvement in money laundering schemes or grand corruption, the European citizens and their governments’ attention is caught by the images of illegal migration and/or criminality, concluded Dionis Cenușa.
