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Russia calls for gradual, not hasty, abolition of visas with Schengen area — diplomat

Russian Ambassador at Large Anvar Azimov compared Shengen visa barriers with the Berlin Wall

© ITAR-TASS/Igor Zarembo

MOSCOW, October 2. /TASS/. Russia is not calling for a hasty and thoughtless abolition of visas with the Schengen area but this process should be gradual and increasingly intensive, Russian Ambassador at Large Anvar Azimov said on Thursday.

“Let’s face the truth: the Berlin Wall in Europe has been replaced with another one, the invisible Schengen wall. Visa barriers on the other side of the Euro-Atlantic area are also quite strong. This, and the ‘Schengen barriers’ in particular, runs counter to the Helsinki Final Act that calls for simplified visa regulations,” he said at the Warsaw Human Dimension Session of the 2014 OSCE Review Conference.

Azimov admitted at the same time that it would not be easy to remove the visa barriers as “they are associated with certain risks” but “we are not calling for a hasty and thoughtless abolition of visas. This process should be gradual but increasingly intensive”.

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Foreign policy Visa regime

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