EU FOREIGN MINISTERS have agreed to suspend a 2007 visa facilitation deal with Russia, which will make it “more difficult” and “longer” for Russian nationals to get visas, the EU’s foreign policy chief said.

Josep Borrell said the ministers’ meeting in Prague had agreed that relations with Moscow “cannot be business as usual” and the agreement should be “fully suspended”.

“In additional to that, we have seen many Russians travelling for leisure and shopping as if no war was raging in Ukraine,” he said.

“Member states considered that we are not business as usual. It cannot be business as usual.”

We have seen a substantial increase of border crossings from Russia into neighbouring states. This is becoming a security risk.

We therefore agree today with EU Foreign Ministers on Full Suspension of the EU-Russia visa facilitation agreement. pic.twitter.com/zdowgdOa8F

— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) August 31, 2022

Borrell said the agreement will significantly reduce the number of visas issued by EU member states, making the process “longer and more difficult”.

He said there will be common understanding that visas can be granted on an individual basis. “We don’t want to cut ourselves from the Russians who are against the war in Ukraine,” he said.

He also said that member states agreed that passports issued by the Russian authorities in Ukrainian territories will not be recognised.

In a concession to eastern EU members who had pushed for a tougher approach, Borrell said that countries bordering Russia “can take measures at a national level to restrict entry into the European Union”.

But he said any measures would have to conform with rules for the EU’s Schengen common travel zone and he emphasised it was important that members of Russian civil society should continue to be able to travel to the EU.

Ahead of the meeting, Poland and the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had said they were considering barring Russian travellers if the EU as a whole failed to do so.

In a joint statement obtained by AFP, the four countries had said that suspending the visa facilitation agreement was “a necessary first step”.

“But we need (to) drastically limit the number of visas issued, above all tourist visas, to decrease the flow of Russian citizens into the European Union and the Schengen area,” they added.

They said the move should contain exceptions “for dissidents as well as other humanitarian cases”.

“Until such measures are in place on the EU level, we… will consider introducing on the national level temporary measures of visa ban, or restricting border crossing for Russian citizens holding EU visas,” reads the statement written in English.

The meeting also faced stiff resistance from some member states yesterday over the proposal of barring Russians from travelling within the bloc.

Countries including Germany and France, as well as Hungary, Luxembourg and Austria had raised objections.

“There is no place for tourism,” said Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky, who is hosting an informal two-day meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers in Prague.

Tightening visa restrictions would “send a signal to the elite in Moscow and Saint Petersburg”, he added.

But France and Germany objected to excessive restrictions in an unofficial diplomatic document obtained by AFP.

They urged checks on Russian visa applicants for potential security risks but advised the EU to let in students, artists or scholars.

“We should not underestimate the transformative power of experiencing life in democratic systems first-hand, especially for future generations,” they said in a joint document.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said it was important to distinguish between those who are to blame for the war and those who are not.

“And we… have to retain our ties to the latter,” she said, singling out Russian artists, students and journalists.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, whose country has resisted efforts to isolate Moscow over the invasion of Ukraine, also objected.

“I don’t think that the visa ban is an appropriate decision under the current circumstances,” he said.

Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney told reporters yesterday that Ireland was in “an unusual space” on the debate because we’re not part of the Schengen area.

“We already have quite a strict regime in terms of facilitation of visas coming from Russia. We don’t have a visa facilitation system like they have across Schengen so we’re in a slightly different category already,” he said.

“And of course, we have a Common Travel Area with the UK so on issues like this, we need to speak to the UK as well, but certainly we can be part of this discussion.”

The Czech Republic stopped issuing visas for Russians on 25 February, a day after Russia had invaded Ukraine, allowing exceptions for civil society actors or humanitarian cases.

© AFP 2022

Additional reporting by Jane Moore