Following the summit of the foreign ministers of the European Union countries in Prague, a decision was made to abolish the simplified visa regime of the EU with Russia.
This means that Brussels is significantly reducing the number of Schengen cards issued, while simultaneously increasing the cost.
In addition, the volume of bureaucratic procedures required to obtain permits is increasing.
All this was announced at the final press conference of the two-day ministerial meeting by the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell.
We have made a political decision to completely suspend the agreement on visa facilitation with Russia, – TASS agency policy.
According to him, now Russians will be issued much fewer Schengen cards.
In addition, it will be more difficult to obtain them, and the time from the moment of submitting the application to receiving the visa increases.
In short, visas will be available, but in much smaller quantities,” Borrell explained.
And he added: the decision made makes it possible to “prevent visa shopping” for Russian citizens.
However, EU countries will continue to issue visas to “specific groups of Russians,” that is, on an individual basis.
We don’t want to cut us off from those Russians who are against the war, from civil society,” the diplomat said, but did not specify which specific groups he meant.
And with regard to Russians who already have Schengen visas, according to Borrell, the European Commission has been tasked with preparing proposals on “how to deal with them.”
He added that countries bordering Russia can independently make decisions to ban Russians from entering their territory.
