Prague 1st, September : Foreign ministers of the European Union (EU) member states have agreed to lift the visa agreement with Moscow which will make it more difficult to Russian citizens to gain admission to the bloc. “We have reached an agreement today with EU foreign ministers on the complete suspension of the visa facilitation agreement between Russia and the EU.accord,” Xinhua news agency quoted Josep Borrell the EU’s high representative for security and foreign affairs policy, as saying during a press conference following the Ministers’ informal two-day meeting in Moscow on Wednesday.
He said that up to this point, the 2007 agreement that made it much easier to Russian citizens to get Schengen visas was “partially suspended” for specific groups and collectives of Russians officials, entrepreneurs and officials, but now it’s “fully suspended”.
“It signifies that it’s going to drastically decrease the amount of new visas granted by EU members,” Borrell said, saying that the process of getting visas will become “longer and more challenging.”
In the event that the state of affairs in the EU countries that border Russia is turning “challenging” The top diplomat of the EU said that the member states could adopt national measures to limit EU entry into their borders.
This is coming in the same way that Ukraine and a few of its member states had pushed for a blanket ban however, other states such as France as well as Germany were against the decision according to the BBC reported.
More than one million Russian citizens have traveled to the EU since Moscow began its ongoing invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
Five EU countries that share a border with Russia -five of them – Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland — – said in an agreement that they are also able to apply temporary bans or restrictions “in an effort to tackle the imminent security concerns for the public”.
In response to the EU’s decision Russian deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Glushko said the EU was “shooting itself in the foot” and the move will not be ignored.
In the meantime, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba also criticized the decision as a “half-measure”.
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