Posts Tagged ‘visas’
EU Links Easing of Visas to Russia’s Rights Record
An official from the European Union spoke out about several concerns over Russia during a visit to Moscow on Friday, warning that plans for a visa-free regime would be put on hold until issues of corruption and human rights are addressed.
The meeting came shortly after the EU decided to cut short a planned meeting with Russian leaders in Brussels later this month, a move which observers have attributed to an ongoing spat over Ukraine.
Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov said Friday’s meeting of the Russia-EU Permanent Partnership Council was more about preserving ties than anything else.
“We are trying not to turn our relations completely sour and maintain a certain level of dialogue,” Konovalov said after meeting with EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia MalmstrЪm, adding that the EU was not willing to take further steps in the dialogue for a visa-free regime with Russia.
Konovalov added that Russia was not going to pressure the EU over the visa deal. “We have a feeling that our colleagues in the EU are not committed and do not feel a need to eliminate the barriers between Russia and the EU,” he said.
Negotiations about the visa-free regime have been ongoing for more than 10 years, and Russia has accused the EU of deliberately delaying the process on several occasions. In December, Russia said it had prepared a visa agreement and that it hoped the EU would sign it at the next Russia-EU summit, which has now been shortened from two days to a few hours on Jan. 28.
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Situation in Russia
Once a year, the EU presidency and I meet with the Russian ministers of interior and justice for talks and deliberations on issues of mutual interest. These issues include cooperation against organized crime, especially trafficking in drugs and human beings, and terrorism. We also talk about migration, rule of law, corruption and visa issues. In recent years I have also made sure that human rights have been put on the agenda. This year’s meeting was held together with the Greek ministers, as well as the Italian Minister of Justice, since Italy is the incoming presidency after Greece.
We met in a cold and snowy Moscow, with the background setting of the current tense relations between the EU and Russia. We had an open exchange of views, but did not really make any progress in our cooperation. For a long time, we have been negotiating essential areas for moving towards a visa free regime with the EU and we should soon be able to agree on further measures to facilitate travelling to the EU for Russian citizens. To entirely abolish the visa requirement is a mutual aim, but a lot of work is yet to be done on the Russian side before this can become a reality. The remaining issues concern, for example, anti-corruption policy, document security, asylum issues and fighting discrimination and xenophobia.
The discussion on human rights took the most time. We are deeply concerned about the situation in Russia with regards to human rights. There are several examples of this situation, such as the new law requiring NGOs to register as “foreign agents”, the law banning homosexual “propaganda”, problems with the rule of law and arbitrary judicial processes, and court rulings against the opposition. I also brought up the Magnitsky case and repeated the demand for an independent investigation on the circumstances of his death.
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EU Shouldn’t Reward Russia’s Repression With Visa Deal
In its usual bureaucratic way, the European Union is sleepwalking into a huge blunder in its relations with Russia.
The EU’s regular summit with Russian leaders opened in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg this week. The EU — and Germany, in particular — wants to sign a new visa-facilitation agreement with Russia, the EU’s third-largest trade partner after the U.S. and China, taking an important step toward eventual visa-free travel in Europe.
The EU’s representatives in Yekaterinburg will be negotiating this visa deal on behalf of the Schengen area, a borderless zone in Europe that includes most, but not all, EU nations, plus a few from outside, such as Switzerland and Norway. This will make visas cheaper and easier for many Russians to acquire.
Ominously, though, it also means the EU may be about to free up travel for the roughly 15,000 Russian bureaucrats who hold biometric “service passports.” These people represent the beating heart of President Vladimir Putin’s state and include officials from the Kremlin, government ministries and the feared security forces, which Russians call “the organs.”
Giving these people visa-free travel would reward them and Putin for their increasingly repressive policies. It would be a mistake.
Emerging Dictatorship
Russia is no longer an emerging democracy but an emerging dictatorship since Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012 and redefined Russian authoritarianism. The protest movement that arose in response to abuse in the election, which returned Putin to power, has been crushed through arrests, trials, political imprisonment and the potential sentencing of opposition leader Alexey Navalny to a decade behind bars. The space for free speech has been squeezed by a terrifyingly vague new treason law and punitive fines for any protests that the authorities deem illegal.
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