EU-Russia visa-free talks coming up

Poland, France and Germany say EU should quickly make progress in talks with Russia on a visa-free travel regime. A Foreign Ministry spokesman in Moscow now confirms the issue will be on the table when Sergey Lavrov and Catherine Ashton meet at the EU-Russian partnership council on Thursday, reports RIA Novosti.

In front of the meeting, EUobserver reports that the foreign ministers of France and Germany have outlined their position at an informal meeting in Brussels where EU’s foreign relation chief Catherine Ashton participated last weekend.

Read also: EU, Russia ready to present visa roadmap

Asked by BarentsObserver at the Barents Council meeting in Kiruna in October to comment on the progress in the visa talks, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said: “It is all up to Brussels now.”

Last week, President Dmitri Medvedev told reporters after a Berlin meeting with German President Christian Wullf that the visa issue is “a relic of the past.”

- EU should abandon (visas for Russians) in order to build up robust relations with Russia, Medvedev said quoted by Russia Today. The German president said at the joint press-conference that there has been some progress in the talks on the matter and urged faster movement towards scrapping visa requirements.

Russia has for years been pressing hard for abandoning visa arrangements with the EU. The 27 EU member states have different views on possible visa freedom with Russia. An illustration of the differences in today’s practicing of the Schengen regulation regarding issuing of visas to Russian citizens is that 98,8 percent of Austrian visas issued in Moscow and 96 percent of Finnish visas issued in St. Petersburg are multiple entry visas, whereas only 1,6 percent of Czech visas issued in Moscow are multiple entry visas.

In addition, both Poland and Norway will introduce visa-free local border traffic with Russia.

Read also: President Medvedev ratified agreement on visa freedom