On May, 23 near the Verkhovna Rada the action “Mykola Zaporozhets” is hold in support of a civilized market of used cars imported from the European Union. Organizers of the picket, the “Ukrainian Association of Patriots – UKROP” and NGO “West Ukrainian Association of transit cars owners” (NGO ZAVTRA), require that the Parliament consider and adopt the bills № 5561 and № 5562, developed by the MPs from UKROP in cooperation with the representatives of NGO ZAVTRA and community “Free people have cars”. The documents provide removal of several restrictions on import of cars, including the year of issue and the number of imported vehicles per person, as well as replacement of eco-standard “Euro 5” by technical inspection. Adoption of these laws will not only help to legalize the car market in Ukraine, but also to increase annual revenue from customs payments to the state budget nearly by 2 billion hryvnias and reduce road fatality, which is now much higher than in the EU, because the Ukrainians use technically defective car, said the head of the UKROP political council Taras Batenko
“These bills bring us closer to Europe. They are, unfortunately, blocked by the Verkhovna Rada, because we have some lobbyists of the Ukrainian car market, who create artificial obstacles, tying cars’ customs clearance cars to standards “Euro 5” and “Euro 6” that have not been implemented in Europe long ago,” said Taras Batenko.
The participants of the action have demonstrated the absurdity of the whole situation in Ukraine through the experiment, during which they imported a “Zaporozhets”, produced in 1991, to Poland and registered it. For all documents and permits in the EU they paid several hundred dollars, whereas a similar procedure in Ukraine now costs almost 3000 dollars.
“An ordinary Ukrainian should save on wages about six years to buy a car. This is nonsense. So we arrived to the Verkhovna Rada driving “Zaporozhets” in order to show the government that they should not lie to us. The whole Ukraine knows that Europe does not require any eco-standards from us,” said the activist of NGO ZAVTRA Mykhaylo Katruk. The participants of the action have appealed to the MPs demanding to stop the arbitrariness of lobbyists and to introduce for the Ukrainian automobilists the same rules that have been operating in the EU for a long time.
“The problem is that the state has limited my possibilities. I cannot import and get customs clearance in Ukraine for a car, produced before 2010. Why, for example, the Poles or the Lithuanians can get customs clearance for German cars and the Ukrainians cannot do it? Why do we have to buy expensive cars?” said in his turn the automobilist Mykola Malukha.
