EU set to suspend visa travel agreement with Russia
Plan to freeze 2007 deal will make it harder and more expensive for Russians to get Schengen-area documents
www.ft.com
EU foreign ministers are this week set to back a suspension of the bloc’s visa facilitation agreement with Moscow in an effort to curb the number of travel permits issued after some eastern member states threatened to unilaterally close their borders to Russian tourists.
Some countries have demanded collective action to stop ordinary Russians from travelling to the EU on tourist visas, in the latest challenge for the bloc as it tries to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine while maintaining unity among its 27 members.
Countries including the Czech Republic and Poland stopped issuing visas to Russian tourists shortly after president Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February. They have since demanded that Brussels enact a complete ban, echoing a plea from Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
But others have continued to grant the travel documents, allowing Russians with visas to travel anywhere in the the Schengen free-movement area.
As a first step, ministers plan to give political support to suspending the EU-Russia visa facilitation agreement at a two-day meeting in Prague that begins on Tuesday, three officials involved in the talks told the Financial Times.
“It is inappropriate for Russian tourists to stroll in our cities, on our marinas,” said a senior EU official involved in the talks. “We have to send a signal to the Russian population that this war is not OK, it is not acceptable.”
Parts of the 2007 deal(opens a new window) relating to free movement of government officials and businessmen were suspended in late February. A wider suspension would remove preferential treatment for Russians when applying for all EU visas, requiring more documents, making them more expensive and significantly increasing waiting times.
“We are in an exceptional situation and it requires exceptional steps. We want to go beyond suspending the visa facilitation,” said the senior EU official, adding that deeper changes could be introduced by the end of the year.
However, there is no consensus on additional measures that Brussels could take that would either reduce the number of EU visas to be issued to Russians or halt their issuance entirely, or on proposals such as extending any ban to citizens of Belarus, which has supported Putin’s invasion.
