After his two-day visit at the summer house of Finland’s President Tarja Halonen, Medvedev highlighted the need for visa-freedom.
- If we want to develop relations in all sectors, there is no alternative to visa-free communication between Russia and the EU, Medvedev said quoted by Itar-Tass.
- If problems exist, it’s certainly that they are not from the Russian side. The problems should be resolved inside the European Union, there are enough crimes inside EU-countries. They need to critically assess the baggage of bilateral and multilateral relations with those countries with which the EU already has visa-free rules, Dmitri Medvedev said.
Finland also want to come to visa-freedom between the EU and Russia, but with a gradual change of the system.
- We doing everything we can today and will continue to do everything we can to come to a visa-free regime, said the Finnish President Tarja Halonen quoted by RIA Novosti from the joint press-conference with Medvedev.
About 7.4 million people crossed the Russian-Finnish border last year.
Last weekend, the issue on visa-freedom between Russian and other European countries was on the agenda at the informal foreign minister meeting in the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Almaty in Kazakhstan. Here, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the OSCE member countries have approved obligations on freedom of movement, and should liberalize visa regimes to expand contacts between people.
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State Secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Espen Barth Eide participated at the OSCD meeting in Kazakhstan. After returning from the meeting Eide says to BarentsObserver that Norwegian authorities shares Foreign Minister Lavrov’s vision on visa-freedom.
- However, there are many steps that must be made before we reach such a vision. This is due to Norway’s participation in the Schengen cooperation, which requires common rules and guidelines for member countries in the visa area, says Eide.
- We appreciate that the Russian foreign minister is so clear in his vision of the visa waiver, and assume that the Russian authorities to intensify work on simplifying visa procedures for foreigners to visit Russia, says Espen Barth Eide to BarentsObserver.
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