Today exactly one year has passed since citizens of Ukraine with biometric passports obtained the right to visa-free travel to the countries of the European Union, except for Great Britain and Ireland, as well as to Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, members of the Schengen area, but not EU members.

The process of crossing the state border for the Ukrainian became much simpler and more comfortable. After all, for a visa-free trip, you need to have only medical insurance, return tickets and, if necessary, confirm the place of residence in a European country and the availability of a certain amount of money.

"In total, since the introduction of the visa-free regime in the European Union countries, nearly 20.3 million citizens have followed, of which almost 4.8 million people on biometric passports and more than 555 thousand Ukrainian citizens have taken advantage of all the visa-free regime," the Interior Ministry said..

They also noted that a certain excitement among those who wanted to travel without hindrance was observed in the first months of the visa-free operation - on average, the border guards formalized 90 thousand Ukrainians per month. In November last year, this figure was already 32.5 thousand people. With the onset of summer, that is, the period of active holidays and travel, border guards again expect an increase in passenger traffic.

Most often Ukrainians choose aviation routes for travel, least of all - by the sea. A peculiar "window to Europe" for Ukraine remains Poland. It is through it that the largest number of Ukrainians get to the EU countries. The smallest flow of travelers from Ukraine to the EU countries through the Slovak border.

The queues at the checkpoints are of a periodic nature and are associated with holidays, vacation periods, mass international events, as well as seasonal work abroad and small border traffic. In addition, recently on the border with the EU, queues are formed due to the fault of the owners of cars on Eurobags and so-called "overpasses", which within a day can cross the border several times. In cooperation with European counterparts, the State Border Service is trying to respond quickly to such situations.

The State Border Guard Service of Ukraine has fulfilled all the specific tasks envisaged by the Liberalization Plan. In particular, all aviation, international and interstate checkpoints on the border with the EU countries were equipped with automated workplaces with the function of biometric control, which allows to read and automatically check all types of biometric documents. In addition, work on building the technical capabilities of departmental information systems does not stop.