MFA notes a large number of unjustified Schengen visa rejections

Initially, after December 2007, when 9 more countries joined the Schengen Agreement, the number of visa rejections in some embassies reached around 50% of all visa applications. The procedure of obtaining a visa became more complicated for Belarusian citizens, informed BELTA the Foreign Ministry.

One of the negative effects of the expansion of the Schengen zone for Belarus is that all the ‘new’ countries increased visa cost for Belarusian citizens up to 60 Euro.

In the course of the past few years the Belarusian MFA was aiming its efforts at minimization of the negative consequences of the expansion of the Schengen zone. The priority measures included signing bilateral agreements between the Republic of Belarus and the countries that were to join the Schengen Agreement.

Via exchanging notes temporary intergovernmental agreements with Lithuania and Poland on mutual trips of citizens were concluded and from December 2007 entered into force. In particular, the agreement with Poland provides for increase of the term of stay up to 180 days in a year (90 days in the course of the following 6 months from the date of the first entry) for citizens living in the territory of the states-parties to the agreement. A visa free regime for up to 30 days of stay is previewed for the owners of diplomatic passports, citizens providing with an evidence of return to their country, citizens with residence permit of another state, members of crew of aircrafts and civil marine ships.

Apart from the clauses contained in the Schengen agreement regarding the issuance of free of charge visas to children under 6 years old, school children, students, post-graduate students and their supervisors, as well as scientists, traveling for the purpose of conducing a scientific research, the agreement with Poland also provides for issuance of free of charge visas for participants of cultural, scientific, technical and sport events based on reciprocity principle. From 1 February 2008 an analogous agreement with Latvia on mutual trips of citizens entered into force.

Currently the MFA is intensively negotiating with Lithuania and Latvia on the issue of concluding agreements on simplified procedure of crossing the border by the inhabitants of the bordering territories, where the bordering territories will be demarked and visa preferences for citizens of both countries living in the direct vicinity of the state border will be identified.

Prior to that the intergovernmental agreements with Hungarian Republic and Sovlak Republic on visa free regime for owners of diplomatic and service passports were concluded.

For the past four years the Belarusian Foreign Ministry was addressing numerous times the officials from the European Commission with a proposal to begin negotiations on simplifying visa procedures, including the reduction of visa cost based on reciprocity principle. There were unilateral steps made by the Belarusian side regarding the simplification of visa formalities for citizens of the EU-member states. Business and guest visas with the term of validity up to 30 days for citizens of these states are issued without official invitations, i.e. there is only a requirement to fill in a visa application form with the indication of the purpose of travel, exact name (or full name) and address of the invitee from the Belarusian side as well as the address of stay in Belarus. The cost of group tourist visa was lowered to 10 Euro.

The Heads of the Belarus embassies abroad may lower the visa cost or free foreign citizens from it in cases of justified requests (while traveling for educational, scientific, humanitarian, etc purposes). The same rule is applied while granting visas to ethnical Belarusians, maintaining cultural connections with their motherland, as well as to entrepreneurs, actively investing into the Belarusian economy.

In February 2008 in Brussels the first round of consultations on visa issues took place with participation of the Head of the Consular Department of the Belarusian MFA and the Heads of the Specialized Departments of the Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security and the Directorate-General for External Relations of the European Commission. A large number of issues were discussed regarding relations between Belarus and the European Union in the sphere concerning visas. The Belarusian side informed the European Commission about its unilateral steps with regard to the issuance of Belarusian visas to the EU citizens and expressed its concern regarding certain negative moments in the work of the consular sections of the countries-members of the Schengen Agreement concerning the issuance of Schengen visas to Belarusian citizens. In particular, several concrete cases of delaying the process of reviewing visa applications were named as well as cases of unjustified, from the Belarusian point of view, rejections of visa. The issuance of visas to auto expeditors was discussed as a separate issue.

The representatives of the European Commission admitted the existence of certain problems in the area of provision of visa services for Belarusian citizens and informed about the amendments and changes in the process of the issuance of Schengen visas being undertaken at the moment. There is a possibility that the new ‘visa code’ aiming at improvement of the existing visa system, might be adopted by the end of this year already.