Moscow - A proposal for a visa-free regime for short visits of Russians to European Union countries and vice versa will "undoubtedly" be raised during a planned EU-Russia summit on Sunday and Monday, said one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's aides.
At the 29th EU-Russia summit, to be held in Strelna, near St. Petersburg, Putin "will try to persuade the EU leaders to cite concrete instances of how the liberalization of those visa regimes serves to promote trade, economic and other relations. It’s an important issue for the Russians," Yury Ushakov told journalists.
"As is well known, the two sides have embarked on the practical implementation of joint moves that have been agreed earlier. Abolishing visas would become a powerful impulse to further rapprochement between Russia and the EU and serve to promote our mutually advantageous and diverse dialogue," Ushakov added.
EU countries and Russia are in talks on visa-free regime proposals and are simultaneously working to simplify visa rules. Russia already has agreements with some EU nations on simplified visa formalities.
The EU is not in a hurry to introduce a visa-free regime with Russia, fearing that visa-exempt entry for Russians would result in a flurry of criminals arriving in EU countries on fake passports.
For this reason, the EU is putting a set of conditions before Moscow in visa exemption talks, such as better security features for personal identification documents, measures against illegal migration, readmission commitments, and joint passport control on borders between Russia and EU countries.
A document setting out moves toward a visa-free regime was agreed at an EU-Russia summit in December 2011.
The head of the Russian mission to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, has said a new agreement on simplified visa rules will be ready for signature if the EU accepts Russia’s point that the accord must not exclude holders of Russian service passports.
"I assume that it is an absolutely clear matter from the technical, formal point of view. And now the question is whether there is political will in member states of the European Union," Chizhov said.
"Service passports are apparently a supersensitive issue for some of the European Union states, though this doesn’t appear to us to be too logical in view of the fact that, with a whole number of other countries, including Ukraine, regulations on a visa-free regime for holders of service passports are included in the text of the EU-Ukrainian agreement on visa simplifications that has been approved on both sides," he said.
"The European side believes that too many service passports are issued [in Russia]. We have explained to our partners that this is actually not true because about half the total number of service passports in the Russian Federation are issued to employees of Russian institutions abroad. In other words, to administrative and technical personnel, who don’t make short visits and are not among those who are covered by this agreement but go [to EU states] for a long time and receive visas. For this reason, it’s not fair to speak of any excessive numbers," the envoy said.
There is a whole series of other points to the planned agreement, he said. "All other aspects of this text except for the article on service passports have been agreed. Including the point that the visa simplifications would extend to civil society organizations," Chizhov said.
He also said some of the EU countries have been having questions recently about visa rules for civil aircraft crews. "This problem will also be solved in this agreement," he said.
