Freedom of movement in changing Europe: example of Russia and the EU. Article by Ambassador Vladimir Chizhov for EP Today. November 2013

Almost 40 years ago, in 1975 when all European countries, including Russia, then the Soviet Union, and other states that are now part of the EU signed the famous Helsinki Final Act, and thus explicitly recognized the importance of free movement and contacts among their citizens for protection and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms. They also committed themselves to “gradually simplify and to administer flexibly the procedures for exit and entry”, and to “consider possibilities for reciprocal abolition of entry visas on the basis of agreements between them”. The Parties reaffirmed these commitments in the relevant OSCE fora focused on human dimension in Madrid in 1983, Vienna in 1989, Copenhagen and Paris in 1990, Moscow in 1991, Budapest in 1994, Ljubljana in 2005, Warsaw in 2011.

Unfortunately the implementation and promotion of the principle of freedom of movement in Europe turned out to be a much more complicated job than it had seemed four decades ago. The crucial political changes of the 1990’s which gave birth to great expectations paving the way to more open and transparent world, especially on the European continent, resulted in fact in reshaping geographical borders of many European countries, but have not changed the mentality of West-East counterbalance. Today, even if unseen, dividing lines are still here. In Europe we witness a situation when there are two visa-free spaces confronting each other – one of the Schengen area, the other of the CIS, and our efforts to demolish down the wall between them aimed at creating a new freer mobility space as dreamed by the OSCE founding fathers, are too far from being completed.

Russia was the first CIS country that managed to “break the ice” starting a visa dialogue with the EU. Since then the Russia-EU free movement agenda has shown some practical results, but has not yet achieved its final goal – the abolition of visas.

After the decision taken at the Russia-EU summit in May 2003 to “examine the conditions for visa-free travel as a long-term perspective” and the adoption in May 2005 of the Russia-EU Road Map for the Common Space of Freedom, Security and Justice which envisaged to "continue and intensify the visa dialogue at expert and political level", some concrete steps were taken to promote visa liberalization between the Russian Federation and the European Union.

Developing people-to-people contacts, erasing barriers on this two-way street has always been one of Russian top political priorities. For that purpose in 2007 the Russian side initiated an expert visa-dialogue to explore conditions for a visa-free regime. This dialogue lasted from 2007 to 2010 and focused on four standard thematic blocs that the EU usually discussed with third countries before proceeding to visa waiver negotiations: document security; illegal migration; public order and security; external relations.

Once the expert meetings were finished, the Russian Federation in 2010 put on the table a draft visa waiver agreement. Unfortunately the logic of proceeding directly to negotiations was not shared by our EU partners who insisted on an extra “road map” prior to abolition of visas.

For this purpose the Parties jointly elaborated and in December 2011 adopted a list of Common Steps towards visa-free short-term travel for Russian and EU citizens based on the same above-mentioned four blocks and started its implementation in early 2012. Since then Russia and the EU exchanged comprehensive and rather thick volumes of written reports, totaling more than 1000 pages, as well as expert field missions on the four blocks. In the course of the missions the Russian side received about 60 EU experts who visited more than 10 different regions of the Russian Federation. During the reciprocal missions the Russian experts went to 15 EU Member States.

The Parties have managed by now to fulfill all the tasks prescribed in the Common steps by completing both the exploratory and experts mission phases. The expert assessments of the state of implementation of the Common steps by both sides are generally positive. The Russian side thereby considers the main job accomplished and is ready to go forward. Now it is up to the EU to take a decision to move to the next stage, i.e. is drafting a Russia-EU visa waiver agreement. From our side we do believe that all technical conditions are in place which enable us to start relevant negotiations on a visa waiver agreement already in the beginning of 2014.

While preparing for abolition of visas, the Parties are simultaneously engaged in facilitating the current visa regime between Russia and the EU. The first step in that direction was the signing of the Agreement on Facilitation of Issuance of Visas in 2006. It entered into force the following year and proved to be quite successful and effective as certain categories of our citizens (businessmen, journalists, young people, sportsmen, artists, relatives visiting citizens of the European Union legally residing in the territory of the Russian Federation and vice versa, etc.) got a possibility to travel in a freer manner: fewer papers, less time for document processing, cheaper visas. And diplomats of our countries were exempted from visa requirements for short-term visits altogether.

Successful implementation of the Agreement prompted the Russian side to propose further facilitation of cross-border travel regime. In April 2011 Russia and the EU launched negotiations on amending the existing Agreement. Its updating will expand categories of persons, among them civil society activists, entitled to get visas through a simplified procedure, including multiple ones with the term of validity of up to five years, broaden the list of persons exempted from visa fees as well as provide visa-free regime for certain categories of citizens, including members of air and sea crews, as well as holders of biometric service passports.

During 2012 and 2013 the Russian and EU negotiators agreed on practically all the amendments to the updated Russia-EU VFA. The only stumbling point still hindering the conclusion of the new agreement is the provision on abolition of visas for service passports holders. Certain EU Member States seem to have concerns regarding this category of Russian citizens, actually mostly officials engaged in further developing Russia-EU relations. In the spirit of cooperation we are trying to meet most of them and have even limited the number of those eligible for visa-waiver to holders of passports with an electronic data carrier only, in quantity absolutely incomparable to the number of EU service passport holders. But some "fears" still persist among certain EU countries, however ridiculous and reminiscent of the times of the Cold War they may seem, thus making the rest of facilitations envisaged hostage of their distrust unworthy of a genuine strategic partnership that we are striving for together. The ball is now in the EU court.

Moreover, contrary to the spirit of the Helsinki Final Act, progress on visa liberalization is becoming tied up by the EU side with other issues of Russia-EU relationship. Such a position won’t bring us closer to the aims we jointly agreed upon almost 40 years ago.

We do believe that pragmatic approach should prevail over certain long-lasting prejudices. It is quite easy to calculate how much our economies, especially those of EU countries, are to profit from visa-free regime, not to mention benefits for our citizens to know and understand each other better. That is quite obvious.

Today we receive more and more signals from our EU partners that the free movement principle cannot be interpreted universally, that there should be a tailor-made approach regarding decisions on visa waiver with third countries taken by the EU. We do not agree with such an interpretation and proceed from more unbiased reading of the universally acknowledged principle. For us freedom of movement is related to technical and economic progress, to improvement of internal security standards and to strengthening of mutual trust in general. The right moment to show our credibility in complying with our common international commitments is here, and together with our EU partners we have no right to miss it.

Source URL: https://russiaeu.ru/en/node/2070