Abkommen zwischen Italien und Russland

In the course of Russian-Italian consultations that took place in the beginning of December in Rome, President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi have discussed the number of the questions connected with collaboration of two countries.

In the course of international consultations a number of the agreements, which affect the most different fields, was signed: from power engineering to tourism.

18 intergovernmental agreements were concluded as the results of negotiations. In particular, as “InoSmi” reports, Italian company Alitalia and Russian “Aeroflot” signed the agreement, that will make possible to organize joint flights, which will contribute to an improvement in air traffic between the countries.

Another agreement was concluded between Finmeccanica and state corporation “Rosstekhnologii” about the joint creation of enterprise for the production of civil safety systems.

The company Tecnimont signed the contract at the cost of 650 million Euro. By the forces of company the factory of dehydrogenation of propane will be built in Tobolsk.

Besides, Russia and Italy agreed about the collaboration in building of Russian railroad, which will be lengthened from China to East Europe and will become the longest in the world.

In addition were reached agreements in fields of power engineering, ecology, economy. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this interaction: the commodity exchange between the countries substantially increases: in spite of crisis, it rose from 23.9 billion Euro to 25.6 billion Euro per year.

Tourism and problems of the mutual development of this branch became the important theme, discussed in the course of negotiations. As stated the head of MID of Italy Franco Frattini in the interview for the television channel Russia Today, in 2010 Rome will possibly put forward a proposal about the possibility of the visa-free regime for Russians on the territory of European Union. As Frattini explained: “Earlier this problem was solved according to the principle of unanimity, so that any dissatisfied country had the right of veto. But now questions of visa regime will be solved by the qualified majority of voices”.

For the present during the encounter Dmitry Medvedev and Silvio Berlusconi have discussed the possibility of facilitating the visa regime between Russia and Italy. At the joint press conference of the leaders of two countries the signing of agreement in the field of tourism was declared. “Visas will be issued much easier”, emphasized Berlusconi. So prime minister noted the insufficient awareness of Italians and Russians about the tourist possibilities of country-partners.

The theme of insufficient awareness became the main during the round table, dedicated to Russian- Italian relations. Newspaper “Evening Moscow” cites the words of President of “Intourist” Alexander Arutyunov about the fact that 95% of Italians arrive to Russia with the cultural and cognitive purposes. However, only a few of them arrive for a second time. And visa into Russia is not the greatest problem. “We need to expand the product line, provide new opportunities for sight-seeing holiday” – Arutyunov said. Thus, presented at the exhibition WTB in London tour “Three capitals of Russia”, which includes a trip to Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kazan once won great popularity.

To promote tourism opportunities and formation of an attractive image of Russia and Italy among the citizenry, according to Rostourism, 2011 will be the year of Russia's culture and language in Italy and of Italian culture and language – in Russia.

For this year a series of activities are planned, including the field of tourism.