EU cannot ban visas for Russians – Brussels
The EU cannot force all of its member states to stop issuing visas to Russian citizens, European Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner said on Sunday.
Speaking at a press conference alongside Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, the bloc migration czar was asked about forthcoming “guidelines” from Brussels to its member states calling for a total ban on category-C visas for Russian tourists.
“Visa is the competence of the member states, so there is no possibility for the EU to ever have a complete ban on that,” Brunner acknowledged.
“We see some member states where the numbers are going up a bit, and that worries us,” he added.
Slovakia, along with Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland, halted tourist visas for Russians in 2022. Slovakia resumed issuing Schengen visas earlier this year, after previously restricting them to Russians with family ties, work needs, or diplomatic status.
Current EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, then Estonia’s foreign minister, urged a bloc-wide ban that year, writing on X, “Stop issuing tourist visas to Russians. Visiting Europe is a privilege, not a human right.”
According to the European Commission, Russian nationals filed more than 606,000 Schengen visa applications in 2024, up from around 520,000 in 2023, around 7.5% of which were rejected.
