Poland and the Baltic states said Thursday they would temporarily restrict entry to Russian citizens holding EU visas from September 19 at the latest.
The prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland said they were concerned “about the substantial and growing influx of Russian citizens” into the EU.
“We believe that this is becoming a serious threat to our public security and to the overall shared Schengen area,” they said in a statement. The statement said the four “agreed on a common regional approach and hereby express their political will and firm intention to introduce national temporary measures for Russian citizens holding visas”.
The measures would “restrict the entry into the Schengen area for Russian citizens travelling for tourism, culture, sport and business purposes”. Exceptions will be made for various categories, including “dissidents”, “humanitarian cases”, family members and holders of residence permits in EU countries.
But the prime ministers said it was “unacceptable that citizens of the aggressor-state are able to freely travel in the EU, whilst at the same time people in Ukraine are being tortured and murdered”. They said they would “continue to seek a common approach on the EU level”.
Lithuanian Deputy Foreign Minister Mantas Adomenas said a decision by Finland, which also borders Russia, not to join in the agreement will not make the entry ban ineffective. “Most of the Russians travel to Eastern Europe via the Baltic states and Poland,” he told reporters. Finland, which has Europe’s longest border with Russia, last month decided to slash the number of Russian tourist visa applications it handles to just 10 percent of the usual 1,000 received per day.
A flat-out ban based on an applicant’s nationality is impossible under Finnish law.
Late last month, the European Union’s Frontex border agency said that 998,085 Russian citizens have entered the EU through land border crossing points since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Sixty-six percent of them entered via the Baltic states or Poland, while 33 percent entered via Finland and the remainder via Norway. The agency noted however that the total number of Russians was not just made up of EU-visa holders, but also included others such as those with residence permits or dual citizenship.