Brussels, 03/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 3 March, European Parliament President Martin Schulz and the European External Action Service (EEAS) announced that Russia had refused entry to Sandra Kalniete MEP (EPP, Latvia) the previous day. Kalniete was wanting to attend the funeral of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead on 27 February (see EUROPE 11265). She is now banned from entering Russian territory until November 2019.
Maja Kocijancic, the spokesperson for High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, believed this refusal to allow entry was “a clear violation of basic principles”. In her view, the justification given that Kalniete “would represent a threat for the security of the state or public order” in Russia “does not seem a credible explanation”. Kocijancic stated that this was neither in line with the visa facilitation in place between the EU and Russia, nor in the spirit of it. “This is not the first time that we notice such refusals for apparently arbitrary reasons (…) We call on the Russian authorities for a maximum of transparency and we expect measures to be taken to avoid similar incidents in the future”, she added. She gave the example of publishing the prohibitions to enter Russian territory decided by the country, “which is not currently the case”.
Schulz announced that he was going to address the Russian authorities “in the strongest terms and demand an official explanation”. “The repeated and arbitrary restrictions on elected parliamentarians entering Russia are a significant affront to EU-Russia relations and to the work of democratic institutions”, he said. “The travel restrictions by Russia on selected European individuals are being applied without the slightest element of reasoning or any forewarning of their application or to whom they apply”, he stated. Schulz believed the refusal to allow Kalniete to enter was “doubly serious” because “in times which call for restraint and goodwill, the Russian administration continues to press all the buttons which go in the opposite direction to de-escalation”. The EPP Group states this is the third time an MEP has been blocked at the Russian border.
The president of the Polish senate, Bogdan Borusewicz, did not obtain authorisation to enter Russia - in his view, “in response to the European sanctions against Moscow”. (Camille-Cerise Gessant)