Russian visa offer gets cool welcome from EU
EU diplomats have poured cold water on an offer by the Foreign Ministry to ease visa rules for Europeans if the liberal visa practices of some European countries are expanded throughout the Schengen zone.
As BarentsObserver reported, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week said that he hopes that all issues needed for the introduction of a visa-free regime with the EU will be solved by the end of 2011.
According to a Foreign Ministry official the Russian government is ready to widen its definition of foreign specialists eligible for favorable work and visa conditions if European countries adopt an initiative by Spain to give two-year multiple-entry tourist visas to second-time applicants and five-year multiple-entry visas to third-time applicants from Russia, The Moscow Times reports, citing Vedomosti.
The official said France and Italy already support the initiative.
But European diplomats were quick to dampen any hopes, noting that while some individual Schengen countries issue visas more freely than others, there was no consensus to adopt this more broadly among the 25 members of the open-border agreement.
- This is an issue being discussed and the current practice of some member states, said Denis Daniilidis, spokesman of the EU delegation to Moscow. Consulates with Schengen member states can individually decide on the length and the type of visa granted.
Among the countries practicing a more liberal approach are those that profit from tourism from Russia, like Spain and Finland. Finland, which has the longest land border with the country of any EU member, holds the record of issuing almost 1 million visas to Russian travelers last year. Spain issued about 445,000 visas to Russians last year, almost 50 percent more than in 2009.
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According to The Moscow Times, a French Embassy spokesman denied the existence of an initiative to ease visa rules. He said France was “actively using the possibilities within the Schengen agreement” to make it easier to get visas for categories like second-time applicants.
Diplomats pointed out that the liberal practices of some Schengen countries are not met by reciprocity from Russian consulates, which rarely give multi-entry visas to tourists.
