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MFA promises 5-year Schengen visas to Russians

08:07, 30 мая 2011

In the nearest 5 years one the Russians shouldn’t expect visa waiver with European countries. But EU may start issuing long-term multi-visas for 5 years to applicants from Russia. However they will have to obtain a visa for shorter period and to prove they are law-abiding citizens. This was reported to RIANovosti by Director of MFA’s All-European Cooperation Department Mr. Vladimir Voronkov.

He revealed that after a high-level meeting in Brussels, where visa issue was discussed, a working group headed by Mr. Alexander Prikhodko, Assistant to Russian President has been created. The group coordinates the process of establishing of mutual moves aimed at long-awaited visa waiver.

“In March we had a seating of the group with all involved ministries and government bodies. As a result a set of mutual steps has been worked out and forwarded to EU relevant authorities. In reply we received a version of this project reviewed by our counterparts with no fundamental changes. This preliminary work was very important for establishing of actual moves that the parties are about to make” – noted the diplomat.

He believes that the main progress is the launching of negotiation process. “For the last ten years we were failing to start actually discussing the issue and solve problems, now we have started moving forward and we hope to nail it down, even though there are still a lot of things to do in order to amend laws and regulations and to adopt technical measures” – said Mr. Voronkov. According to his words the major questions discussed with EU include issuing of bio-metric passports, cooperation in fighting illegal migration, terrorism and drug traffic, securing the borders and judicial partnership.

According to Mr. Voronkov the visas issue could be resolved by 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi. But long-term visas may become a prototype of visa-free regime. “Schengen return passports with very short visas – from several days to a year, however the agreement allows issuing visas for up to five years, that are much more convenient. We managed to agree on issuing more and more 50-year visas from both sides. European Union doesn’t plan to start issuing these 5-year visas straight away, first they are going to go for shorter entry visas (up to one year). If an applicant proves himself to be a decent and law-abiding citizen he will be granted a visa for longer time. This is a prototype of visa-free regime, 5 years is a lot of time” – said Vladimir Voronkov.

He assumed that if 5-year visas become wide-spread, many existing stereotypes will go away. “It is believed in many countries that when the borders are opened, all the Russians will leave the country. But if this 5-year visas proceeding develop, people will be able to see that there are no illegal migration threat from Russia” – the diplomat pointed out.

“In fact near-border visa-free regime may be implemented like it was done between Poland and Ukraine. Now we are trying to adopt similar scheme for our Kaliningrad Region and some Polish provinces. And not only should this visa-free area include 30-km zone around the border, but the entire region as well. EU doesn’t mind creating such zone, but Poland still awaits European Commission’s permission to deepen visa-free zone, as there no large Polish towns within 30-km radius from the border” – said Mr. Voronkov. He thinks that in this case visa-free arrangements make no sense as it is large cities that are the financial centers. “Visa-free regime provides opportunities for economic growth and cooperation, plus it is a great experience”.

He also told about a recent meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Germany and Poland in Kaliningrad, where visa issue was the most actively discussed. “We obtained agreement of Germany to support the near-border traffic initiative. I think the actual decision will be made quite soon” – concluded Vladimir Voronkov.

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