Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday accused the European Union of employing a double standard when it agreed to allow nondiplomatic Ukrainian officials to enter member states without a visa. “A Ukrainian bureaucrat is no different from a Russian one,” he told students at Moscow’s Diplomatic Academy.
Russian and Ukrainian diplomats are permitted to enter the EU without a visa. But while Ukrainian service passport bearers, which can be rank-and-file ministerial officials, are also allowed visa-free entry, their Russian counterparts aren’t. Russia will not tolerate this “discriminatory approach,” Lavrov told the assembly.
The same day, the EU presented Georgia with a set of benchmarks to meet in order to establish a visa-free regime. Last week, Lavrov and his EU counterpart, Catherine Ashton, recognized that such a regime between Russia and the EU would not be possible before the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
“The EU approaches countries on a case-by-case basis and does not compare them,” EU delegation spokesman Soren Liborius told The Moscow Times on Monday. Ukraine’s case is different because it unilaterally lifted visa requirements for all citizens of the EU.
According to Liborius, the service passport issue is “the only obstacle” that prevents Russia and the EU from concluding an amended visa facilitation agreement and will be even “broader than the one that was signed with Ukraine, as it includes more categories of people.”
Ukraine concluded an amended visa facilitation agreement with the EU in July 2012, which introduced enhanced visa-obtaining procedures for such categories as journalists and representatives of civil society organizations, among others.
Read more: Lavrov Lambastes EU Over Visa Fairness | News | The Moscow Times
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