Interior Minister says no to visa-free travel
Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen has rejected the idea of visa-free travel between Finland and Russia, saying that elimination of visa requirements would require hundreds of extra police officials.
According to the Interior Minister, neither Russia nor Finland has prepared for the implementation of visa-free travel arrangements.
- There is no possibility to increase resources for officials during this term of this government, Räsänen said in an interview, according to YLE. - The EU’s visa-free project will surely progress, but this is in no way possible within the next few years, she added.
In addition, she named as a precondition the adoption of a European-wide system which would allow real-time tracing of non-EU citizens in the area.
Räsänen also pointed out that one percent of applicants, totaling 10,000 individuals, were denied visas last year. - That’s a lot. What could be among that group? Räsänen asked.
More and more Russians are visiting Finland. In course of the five first months of 2011, more than 15,000 visas were issued at Finland’s consulate branch office in Murmansk. This is nearly twice as many as in the same period in 2010, BarentsObserver reported.
A study from May 2011 showed that the number of Russians to Finland could double if the visa regime was lifted.
