La Unión Europea se negó a arreglar las demoras del régimen sin visados ​​con Rusia

Anvar Azimov, the Ambassador at large of Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, informed that the European Union opposes the determination of visa-free regime with Russia, while Russia insists on its introduction in 2014, before the start of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, – informs the agency “Interfax”.

“The European Union has a cautious approach in fixing the terms of a visa-free regime. The EU side refrained from commenting this issue, explaining that they do not see the reasonability in fixing the delays,” – the agency quotes the words of the Ambassador.

One of the main challenges on the way to the abolition of visas remains the question about the owners of the service biometric passports.

Earlier the representatives of the European Union declared that developing an agreement on visa-free regime they were primarily concerned about ordinary citizens, not government officials and parliamentarians. Russia insisted on simplification of the visa regime for the official passport holders in the first place.

During the meeting held last week in Cyprus, the Russian side expressed readiness to make concessions and to exclude the military men from the number of the service passport holders, leaving the most numerous categories: employees of the administrative and technical services of diplomatic missions and trade representatives, employees of the representatives of Russia in international organizations, etc. But Europe did not accept such a compromise.

Anvar Azimov commented on the official passports issue: “We expressed the wish to our partners that they work with the staggering minority in the EU. If by the end of October they make a positive decision, we will be prepared to extend the moratorium on visa-free entry for crew members before the signing of the upgraded agreement on visa facilitation,” – the newspaper “Kommersant” quotes the Ambassador’s words.