As Kommersant learnt, “while Moscow has been insisting on cancelling visas of all the owner of such passports up to this moment, today it agrees to exclude the most numerous categories from this number – military men and administrative personnel of diplomatic missions.”

“If this suggestion doesn’t get approved, Moscow threatens to re-introduce visas for crew teams starting November 1 (which are currently frozen),” the newspaper notes. According to it, “Russia put forward this proposal at the yesterday meeting of the EU-Russia Permanent Partnership Council on Freedom, Security and Justice held on Cyprus, at ministers’ representatives level. One of the key agenda themes was an issue of visa regime liberalization.”

“The sides tried to solve the last matter of argument on their way to signing an agreement on introduction of amendments to the 2006 treaty simplifying the process of visas issuing to the Russian Federation and EU citizens – the problem of official passports,” writes Kommersant.

Proposals of the Russian Federation unveiled yesterday, according to Kommersant, are as follows: “If the EU agrees to cancel visas for all owners of biometric official passports, Russia will take an obligation to issue documents of this kind to a very strict circle of persons. The two most numerous categories will lack in this list.”

The first one is military people. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation numbers about 80,000 blue passports. The Ministry went easy on the news. “We don’t see any tragedy in this question. A mechanism of getting visas is quite nicely developed. Rejections are rather rare for the owners of blue passports,” explained a Ministry of Defense informer to Kommersant.

Biometric official passports won’t be issued to administrative and technical services’ employees at diplomatic and trade missions (total number of 25,000 people).

The number of biometric official passports totals 7,500. Overall, Russia is looking to issue about 15,000 of these documents. These passports are a subject of negotiations between Moscow and the EU.

The initial reaction of the EU on this Russian proposal was rather moderate. “Working out a modernized agreement on simplifying a visa regime, we hoped, first of all, to make common people’s lives easier, but not lives of the authorities or MPs,” a European diplomatic source acquainted with the negotiations process explained to Kommersant.

Moscow, however, hopes to receive a positive conclusion on the issue of official passports that will be made very soon, by the end of October, the newspaper informs.

Otherwise, Russia threatens to cancel the moratorium on a visa regime for the civil crew teams starting Nobember 1, 2012. This category of persons, according to the recommendations of the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation, is currently freed from acquiring visas, Kommersant notes.

“We made it clear to our partners for them to have a close work with their hesitating minority in the EU,” Russian Ambassador-at-Large Anvar Azimov told Kommersant.

“If they succeed to make a positive decision till the end of October, we will be ready to prolong the Moratorium on visa-free entry for crew teams till signing a modernized agreement on simplification of visas issuing.” According to Azimov, the parties could introduce respective amendments to the agreement on simplification of visas issuing as soon as in upcoming December, during the EU-Russia Summit in Brussels. “The matter depends on the EU,” Ambassador noticed.

On the contrary, one Kommersant’s source close to the EU delegation said that Brussels “doesn’t see any link between crew members and officials holding service passports.” The source also reminded that Russian crew teams also use this right of visa-free entry of the EU countries, but Brussels doesn’t want to make them get visas. If Russia goes for this measure, the EU, as he said, “is likely to do the same.” “We don’t want it to happen,” he admitted.

Project Group №6