Visa-free traveling by 2018?
I believe that a visa-free regime between Russia and the EU could be introduced in 2018, Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb says.
Meeting with Head of the Republic of Karelia Andrei Nelidov last week, Stubb underlined that the introduction of visa-free travelling is “not a question about decades, but a question about a few years”.
-I believe that the visa-free regime could be introduced in 2018, he added, a press release from the Karelian administration reads.
The foreign minister maintained that the visa issue will strongly benefit from the introduction of biometric passports. He also said that the Russian requirement of registration of foreigners within three days after arrival in Russia should end and that procedures for employment and migratory registration should be facilitated.
Read also:Biometric passports pave way for visa-freedom
Stubb met with Nelidov during his three-day visit to Northwest Russia last week. The minister expressed a strong commitment to closer cooperation with the neighboring Russian region.
-Karelia is the Russian gate towards Europe, and we strongly hope that bilateral relations will develop, he stressed. The foreign minister has a strong personal link to the Russian region. Both his grandparents and his father come from the parts of Karelia, which before the 2WW belonged to Finland.
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According to Stubb, a total of 60,000 Schengen visas were issued to people in the Republic of Karelia last year, which amounts to almost ten percent of the regional population. A total of 960,000 visas were in 2010 issued to Russians by Finnish consular authorities.
As reported by BarentsObserver, Stubb during his visit also opened one of the world’s biggest visa centres. The centre, located in Sankt Petersburg will be able to handle new thousands of visa applicants. The 3,000 square meters top-modern visa centre has 83 service counters and more than 200 employees.
