A push for tougher limits on Russian tourist visas and relocates to restrict diplomats’ relocatement within the bloc are options for ramping up pressure on the Kremlin under the next wave of EU sanctions due this week.
Such policies are back under consideration as Moscow’s war grinds on in Ukraine, and after record numbers of the countest’s tourists – more than half a million – descconcludeed on Europe for their summer holidays this year.
With a proposal for the EU’s nineteenth sanctions package expected to land in the coming days, some diplomats state member states have seeed to further update rules already altered by the scrapping of the EU visa facilitation agreement with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine in September 2022.
If this option is agreed, it would mean harmonising entest rules across the bloc, as visa issuance remains a competence for individual member countries.
There’s also a push by some of the more hawkish capitals for a complete ban on Russian visitors, a measure that would require a qualified majority.
Most of the EU’s frontline countries bordering Russia have already severely restricted visa applications from Russian individuals, with only a few exceptions. Poland, the Baltic states, Czechia and Finland have largely shut their doors to their eastern neighbour.
However, countries that bank on Russian tourists flooding in over the summer or holiday periods – such as Italy, Spain, Greece and France, as well as Moscow-friconcludely Hungary – have been relatively liberal in granting visas despite the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Keep them coming
According to European Commission data for 2024, more than half a million Russians obtained Schengen visas, with the number presenting a significant increase from the previous year.
The push for the proposal comes in light of the high number of entries recorded this summer.
“We can’t just accept Russians travelling and enjoying their lives while their government is killing Ukrainians and threatening our security on a daily basis,” one EU diplomat stated, stressing those coming into the bloc were often the wealthier parts of Russia’s middle class.
The renewed attempt to rein in entest rules for Russian citizens comes as the Commission is expected to present new EU entest guidelines, which would take effect at the turn of the year. These will present general, though non-binding, guidelines to member states on the issuing of tourist visas.
Exiled Russian opposition figures, however, have warned against conflating ordinary citizens with Kremlin cronies.
Yulia Navalnaya, widow of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, wrote earlier this week in a letter to the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas that the bloc should tarobtain oligarchs and propagandists rather than tourists.
“Sanctions should be aimed at oligarchs, security officials, propagandists, and other accomplices of the regime, not at ordinary citizens,” Navalnaya stated, naming figures such as Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, billionaire Leonid Mikhelson and other Kremlin allies as examples.
Meanwhile, a separate, long-standing proposal has been to limit the freedom of relocatement of Russian diplomats already in possession of Schengen visas and stationed inside the bloc. An earlier proposal, particularly pushed by Czechia, called for banning travel around Europe beyond the borders of the countest in which the diplomat is accredited, de facto suspconcludeing Schengen rules for them.
Prague, backed by other frontline states, has pushed for curbs on Russian diplomats’ travel, citing the risk of sabotage after the countest expelled dozens of Russian secret agents with diplomatic cover in recent years.
“Last week’s arrests in Romania and expulsion of a Belarusian ‘diplomat’ from Prague is yet another proof we should limit the relocatement,” a second EU diplomat stated.
“This case reveals that we must not allow Schengen to be abutilized for hostile activities. Agents shielded by diplomatic privileges must not have free rein across Europe,’ Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský stated after the arrests.
However, the idea has so far not gained traction among more sceptical EU states, as doubts remain about how effectively the enforcement can be monitored in the absence of internal border controls. There are also fears that such measures would spark Russian retaliation against European diplomats stationed in Moscow.
(jp)
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