Entry ban for all Russians

Entry ban for all Russians?

More and more EU countries no longer want to issue tourist visas to Russians. Legally, the matter is not so simple, warns Brussels.

When EU foreign ministers meet at the Prague Congress Center on August 30, after the summer break, a heated debate awaits: should Russians continue to receive EU tourist visas or not? This issue currently divides the Union, and the discussion is gaining speed every day. In addition to Helsinki, Copenhagen, Prague and Warsaw, the Baltic governments of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius are also calling for an immediate freeze on the award of contracts – and with it an end to regular travel by Russian citizens to the EU. “I don’t think it’s right that Russians can enter the Schengen area as tourists and hang around while Russia is killing people in Ukraine,” Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said earlier this week.

Currently, Russian tourists can only reach the EU directly by land via neighboring countries – i.e. via Finland, Estonia or Latvia – as air traffic has been disrupted after the start of the war of aggression against Ukraine. Like the Czech Republic, the Baltic countries have already severely restricted the issuance of visas, and Finland plans to follow suit next month. Other member states – Denmark is one of them – are awaiting an EU-wide solution. Rightly so, because the national concession freeze makes little sense in the Schengen area of ​​26 states (including Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, as well as 22 EU countries): a visa from one country entitles you to enter any other country. For this reason alone, the pressure to bring about an EU-wide solution in the near future is likely to increase in the coming weeks.