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Poland ready to ease the visa regime for Russians

08:07, 16 сентября 2011

Russian and EU parliamentaries hope the negotiations on the easing of the visa regime between Russia's Kaliningrad region and several bordering regions of Poland will come to a successful finish in the nearest future.

«We've supported the initiative for, as an exclusion, near-border cooperation standards to come into full effect on the entire territory of the Kaliningrad region. This only concerns Poland at the moment, Lithuania was not mentioned», - said the co-chairman of the Russian side of the committee, deputy head of the State Duma's committee on international affairs, Andrey Klimov.

«According to our information, it's clear we can count on the EU justice and home affairs council to back the European Commission's proposal to make ammendments to rule 19/31 from 2006, giving the green light for Russian-Polish negotiations. We are seriously counting on that. Of course, such matters have to be supported by all 27 member-states of the EU, but we hope, no one's going to be against it», - told ITAR-TASS Russia's permanent representative to the EU Vladimir Chizhov. He added, the agreement on minor near-border travel may not be signed before the end of this year. «Poland will hold nation-wide parliamentary elections on October 9th and will choose a new government», - Chizhov reminded. «If the next government sustains the same sort of enthusiasm shown by its forerunners, we hope, the negotiations will not drag on», - he added. Chizhov stressed it's important for a number of states that the implementation of such a regime didn't create a precedent, since the European Union has many external borders.

Concerning the matter of a full abolishment of the visa regime between Russia and the EU, Chizhov said, «dialogue is continuing». «Kaliningrad is a pilot project. But moving on to a complete visa-free regime between Russia and the EU is what's principally important both for this region and the residents of other parts of our country», - he explained. «We'll have to negotiate separately with Great Britain and, I'm affraid, it won't be easier», - stressed Russia's representative.

According to Euromag, the European participants of the meeting, have a full understanding of the Kaliningrad region's enclave location. «We want to support the stable development of Kaliningrad as a part of Russia, the Baltic region and also insure a free trade of goods and services between this territory and EU states», - said a representative of the European Parliament Michael Plukh, adding that a number of programms is already being implemented with this goal.

The European Commission's proposal to make ammendments to rule 19/31 from 2006 is about widening the zones for minor near-border travel to the entire territory of the Kaliningrad region and a similar area of Poland and Lithuania, which will allow to ignore current European norms of a 30km distance from the border-line. If the ammendments are passed, Poland and Russia will be able to begin bilateral negotiations on the agreement, allowing the residents of the Kaliningrad region and Poland to travel without visas with special permission. So far, Lithuania failed to show any interest in this initiative.

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