The Prime Minister of Finland, Sanna Marin, is in favor of restricting the issuance of tourist visas to Russians at the European level.
Yle writes about it
“It is wrong that while Russia is waging an aggressive, brutal aggressive war in Europe, Russians can live a normal life, travel around Europe, be tourists. This is wrong,” said Marin.
She hopes that the EU countries will solve this issue together, because it is possible to cross the border of Finland with a visa of any country of the Schengen Agreement.
According to the head of the consular service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, Jussi Tanner, after the lifting of the coronavirus restrictions, border crossings by Russians with Finland increased by 10-30 percent compared to spring and early summer.
The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, Pekka Haavisto, said that his country will no longer issue tourist visas to citizens of the Russian Federation according to the same logic that was in effect before.
Finland will tighten visa rules for Russian citizens, but the measures must be synchronized with other Schengen countries, Haavisto said.
“It is not enough for Finland to make decisions, the same rules must apply throughout the Schengen area,” he said.
According to him, Finland will ask the rest of the EU to start following the same principles.
The heads of the largest Riksdag groups previously signaled that they were ready to stop issuing tourist visas to Russians. At the same time, a recent Yle poll showed that most Finns want to ban Russian travelers from entering Finland on tourist visas.
During his visit to Kyiv on August 3, Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu announced that Estonia will submit a proposal to the EU to ban the issuance of tourist visas to Russians within the next week.
