“Cooperation and the fact that the agreement served as a bridge between Crimea and the EU are much more important than money,” Head of the Council of Ministers Vasyl Dzharty said as he signed in Brussels an agreement on financing of the Support of the Joint Initiative for Cooperation in Crimea program, KW wrote in an article, according to KyivWeekly.
The program launched by the European Commission envisages the development of the social infrastructure of Crimea and modernization of the tourism industry on the peninsula. The agreement, the implementation of which will begin this year, envisages the allocation of EUR 5 mn for the development of the tourism infrastructure in Crimea, a similar amount will go to the development of social infrastructure objects. EUR 2 mn will be allocated to attract foreign investments to the economy of Sevastopol.
During his meeting with European Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy Stefan Fule, Mr. Dzharty called on the European Commission to help open up consulates and EU visa support centers in the Crimean Autonomy. Today, residents of Crimea have to waste time and money to travel to Kyiv to obtain a visa to cross the western border of Ukraine.
Fule supported the initiative and promised to discuss the issue with EU High Representative of Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton, Head of the EU External Action Service for Relations with the Western Balkans, Eastern Partnership and Russia Miroslav Lajcak and EU member country ambassadors to Ukraine
Last July, President Viktor Yanukovych formulated a new vision of the autonomous republic as a territory of cooperation between the EU and Ukraine.
