Schengen Rhapsody

Europeans are almost ready to let Russians in without visas. But they fear an influx of guest workers from the CIS countries

In April, as part of preparations for the Russia-EU summit, Hugues Mingarelli, deputy head of the European Commission's department for external relations, flew to Moscow. When his meeting with Deputy Minister of Economic Development Andrey Slepnev began to drag on, the European official apologized and said that it was time for him to go to the airport. A few more hours - and he would have ended up in Russia illegally, because he was issued a Russian visa for only 24 hours.

The Russia-EU summit, which is taking place in Rostov-on-Don this week, should symbolize that relations between Moscow and Brussels have finally turned cloudless. Even the place of the meeting is indicative - in recent years the Kremlin has held similar summits somewhere in Khanty-Mansiysk and Khabarovsk, as if on purpose to complicate the journey of European officials. Now everything is different: at the summit, Dmitry Medvedev is going to demonstrate that Europe is a priority partner for Russia. Moreover, Russia wanted to achieve a breakthrough in Rostov on two fronts at once. First, says a source in the Russian Foreign Ministry, they want the European Union to approve Russia's proposed Partnership for Modernization program. But more importantly, the parties were going to announce the start of negotiations on the abolition of the visa regime.

However, high-ranking European diplomats assure Newsweek, Russians will not be able to travel to Europe without a visa for a long time. The Russian Foreign Ministry says that the technical problems have been resolved, and Moscow is ready to resolve all the rest as soon as possible. But the Europeans don't believe it. “If Russia really wanted to solve the visa problem, it would abolish the system of compulsory registration for foreigners,” says the European diplomat. “Now it is much more difficult for Europeans to travel to Russia than vice versa.” Another Newsweek source notes that Russia, of course, has changed its rhetoric towards Europe, but this is not enough for the EU to immediately make concessions - especially since Russia itself is not yet doing this.

MAP LOCATION

Vladimir Putin was the first to introduce a visa-free regime between Russia and the European Union in 2002. Already in the summer of 2003, Romano Prodi, the then President of the European Commission, confidently declared: in five years there will be no visas. But he was wrong.

Political differences were the main obstacle. Moscow and Brussels were not even able to start negotiations on a new agreement on partnership and cooperation in time - their start was postponed either because of the unresolved issue with the import of Polish meat, or because of disputes with Lithuania, or because of the war with Georgia.

However, at the end of 2007, the European Union and Russia agreed on an agreement on visa facilitation. It facilitated the procedure for obtaining a Schengen visa for members of official delegations, scientists, artists, journalists and truckers. And the holders of diplomatic passports got the opportunity to travel to Europe without a visa at all.

Now relations between Moscow and Brussels have improved. And in January of this year, as soon as Spain assumed the rights of EU presidency, its Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos promised that within six months the European Union would develop a roadmap for liberalization and, ultimately, the abolition of the visa regime. Then Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini promised to put the issue of abolishing the visa regime with Russia to a vote in the EU Council.

In the Russian media, these statements caused euphoria. Everyone started talking that in Rostov-on-Don they would already solemnly announce a specific date for the abolition of visas. But the euphoria was premature. On the eve of the summit, Newsweek sources from both sides assured that even a "road map" would not be approved in Rostov. The fact is that Europeans usually offer road maps to candidate countries for membership. In order not to mislead Russia, the visa plan will be called differently. “We need a political impulse, not a map. If the summit succeeds in adopting a common political statement on visas, this will serve as an impetus,” a high-ranking Russian diplomat assures.

POLITICS OR ILLEGALS

Russia, according to the prime minister and the president, is ready to cancel visas "even tomorrow." The Foreign Ministry says that during the two years of negotiations on visas, all technical issues, including border security, have been removed and purely political issues remain. The first of them is the position of the Baltic countries. However, one of the Swedish diplomats notes that Russian confidence in the existence of the Polish-Baltic conspiracy is a myth: “It is paradoxical, but the toughest position on the visa issue is in those countries that Russia considers the most constructive partners: France and Germany.”

The second obstacle, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry, is the fear of offending other eastern neighbors of the European Union, primarily Ukraine and Moldova, which have already unilaterally canceled visas for Europeans. Two weeks ago, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslav Sikorski said that all Eastern Partnership participants (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine) should have equal rights with Moscow in the EU visa policy. "They are not ready to give to us alone, but to give to all at once - both boldly and early," the Russian diplomat explains the logic of the Europeans.

“If we have a visa-free regime with Russia, then people from South Ossetia and Abkhazia will be able to travel to Europe. How then to be with Georgia? - the representative of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs asks a rhetorical question.

The Europeans assure that the existence of visas is not a whim, but a forced measure. There are three technical problems, the European diplomat lists: the introduction of biometric passports, increased control on the southern borders of Russia and an agreement on the readmission of citizens of third countries. Due to the visa-free regime with most of the CIS countries, Russia has a huge open border. “Therefore, there are strong fears in the EU that not only Russia, but also its neighbors will join the visa-free regime by default,” Nikolai Petrov, a member of the scientific council of the Carnegie Center, acknowledges the concern of the Europeans.

The Russian side considers these fears far-fetched. “Allegations that after the introduction of a visa-free regime, hordes of migrants will flood into the EU is a myth,” says the Russian diplomat. The border will exist physically, the border guards will still check passports, at the border they can still ask about insurance, reservations. Joanna Konieczna-Salamatin of the Polish Stefan Batory Foundation agrees: “Before Poland joined the EU, the country had a visa-free regime with Ukraine. But the whole of Ukraine did not turn out to be with us! Many came, but also left.

True, the latest statistics refute her words. Of the 1,333 non-EU citizens who illegally crossed the EU's land-based eastern border through Poland last year, 947 were Ukrainians, according to Frontex, the European border security agency. There were only 107 illegal Russians. “The external border of Poland is the most tense external border in the entire EU, and Ukrainians are the most numerous nationality crossing it,” Isabella Cooper, a representative of the agency, explains these figures. Russia, she notes, although not such a problematic country, however, holds the third place in the number of refusals of Schengen visas - after Ukraine and Brazil.

FANS AND JOURNALISTS

The maximum that Russians can count on following the results of the summit in Rostov is further visa liberalization. If two-, three- or even five-year visas are introduced, in practice this will bring Russians as close as possible to a visa-free regime with Europe, adviser to the Spanish Embassy Borja Cortes-Breton explains to him.

Last week European officials in Brussels preliminary agreed on 12-15 visa proposals for the Rostov summit, the French diplomat says. Their essence is to take the Visa Facilitation Agreement of 2007 as a base and expand the categories of citizens for whom the procedure for obtaining Schengen visas will be simplified, as well as increase the number of issuance of multiple Schengen visas. The only thing Europe is not interested in is expanding the privileges of service passport holders.

“We are ready for anything. If the EU does not want to open the borders for everyone, let's single out certain categories of citizens and certain events,” the Russian diplomat reflects. For example, you can introduce a visa-free regime for journalists or introduce it for specific events, as happened when British football fans were allowed to enter Russia for the Champions League final without visas.

But Moscow can get all this only on the terms of reciprocity, they insist in Brussels. Europeans are very annoyed by the need to register upon arrival in Russia. “When you get a Schengen visa, you can move freely. No one will dare to ask you what you are doing in Naples if you have flown to Rome. We want the same,” the European diplomat laments.

Liberalization on a reciprocal basis is only an intermediate stage, and the abolition of visas is already a long-term goal, the Spanish diplomat explains. How long is the big question. A French diplomat, for example, says that his country is giving the process ten years.

Mikhail Zygar participated in the preparation of the article