On Tuesday 6 September, the European Commission formalised, as expected, the political decision taken on 31 August in Prague by foreign ministers to fully suspend the 2007 Visa Facilitation Agreement with Russia (see EUROPE 13011/1).
The proposal for suspension, which requires a qualified majority, will increase the cost of issuing Schengen visas for Russian citizens, as well as making procedures more cumbersome and slowing down the process, according to the Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson.
“A country waging a war of aggression as Russia is doing should not be able to benefit from visa facilities as long as it continues its destructive foreign policy and military aggression”, the Commissioner said. “Being a tourist is not a fundamental right”, she insisted, “confident” that the EU Council will validate her proposal “as early as this week” and that the full suspension of the agreement will come into force “on Monday” 12 September.
Specifically, this will mean higher visa fees, with the visa fee rising from €35 to €80 for all applicants, and longer processing times, with the standard processing time increasing from 10 to 15 days. This period may be extended up to a maximum of 45 days in specific cases where the application requires further examination.
On 6 September, the Commission also put into effect the ministers’ decision not to recognise Russian passports issued to Ukrainian citizens from the occupied territories and “will soon publish” guidelines on how to safeguard the entry into the EU of Russian citizens who are at risk or opposed to the war, such as journalists, dissidents or family members settled in the EU. The guidelines will also mention that a Member State may also refuse to issue a visa on the grounds of internal security or the international context.
Member States will in any case be asked to “pay less attention” to the cases of Russian citizens who have no essential reason to come to the EU.
Finally, contrary to what Josep Borrell, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, announced at the end of August, “fewer than one million currently valid visas are held” by Russian citizens and it is “possible to review the issuance of these visas”, said the commissioner. Mr Borrell had put forward a figure of 10 million currently valid visas. As of 1 September 2022, approximately 963,000 Russians held valid visas for the Schengen area, according to the Commission.
Link to the proposals for an EU Council Decision on the suspension of the facilitation agreement and for an EU Council and European Parliament Decision on the non-recognition of passports issued in the occupied territories: https://aeur.eu/f/2ye ; https://aeur.eu/f/2yf (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)