When Russians will actually be able to feel like free citizens of the world is not yet known; most likely, a visa-free regime will first be introduced for citizens of Russia and the EU holding diplomatic and service passports who travel for up to 90 days. The issue of letting tourists cross borders will be decided only in the second stage. According to Alexander Yakovenko, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, a “road map” for the phased transition to a visa-free regime for mutual trips must first be prepared, so that later we can confidently move in this direction.
Tour operators welcome the opening of borders, even if it happens only in 4-5 years. “There are many problems now with obtaining visas to the Schengen zone. It’s not even about refusals, but about the fact that about 30-40% of potential clients do not want to gather documents for the consulate and wait a long time for an answer. They choose visa-free countries where a trip can be arranged in one day,” explains Anna Ochkova, commercial director of “Congress-Tour”. Market participants are confident that the abolition of the visa regime with EU countries could increase the flow on these destinations by 3-5 times.
However, experts at the Russian Union of Travel Industry (RST) believe that there will be many obstacles to the opening of borders, and not even those related to security and migration. The fact is that Russian consulates abroad exist solely on income from visa fees, as well as a carte blanche to regulate the cost of these services depending on the costs associated with processing documents. Theoretically, visas for citizens of two countries traveling to each other should cost the same. But because of this system, trips by foreigners to Russia are much more expensive than travel by Russians both to Europe and to other countries.
For example, at the German consulate in Moscow a single-entry tourist visa costs 30 euros, while at the Russian consulate in Germany it costs 45 euros. For a multiple-entry visa, Germans have to pay 110 euros (Russians - 50 euros). A multiple-entry visa to the UK for Russian citizens is issued for 36 pounds, while for Britons coming to Russia it is 100 pounds. Americans have to pay from $70 to $200 to enter Russia, and Russians - $100 to enter the USA.
The experiment on issuing “fast visas” at entry points to Russia through Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the Kaliningrad Region was actually a failure two years ago, as it threatened a significant reduction in income for Russian consulates abroad. Now a difficult situation may arise in 2004, when Poland introduces entry visas. This country is currently the main visa-free transit destination for bus tours to Europe (the tourist flow here from Moscow alone is more than 100 thousand people per year). The main consumers of bus trips are people with very modest incomes, for whom the price of entry will determine a lot. The size of the tourist flow will not change if the parity visa fee does not exceed $10. The Polish side, according to the RST, is ready to make concessions, but the Russian side may put forward visa fees of $20-60 at the negotiations.
The concept for the development of Russian tourism, prepared by the Ministry of Economic Development, includes a clause on the need to simplify tourist formalities for citizens of countries that are safe from the point of view of illegal migration. The concept was adopted by the government a year ago, but nothing has changed since then. “The whole point is in the fiscal approach to organizing consular affairs as a natural monopoly with the extraction of monopoly high profits,” says Irina Tyurina, a representative of the RST. “Meanwhile, tax revenues to the budget from the tourism industry directly depend on tourist flows to Russia. And one cannot profit from the desire of foreigners to visit our country if Russia is truly interested in shaping its image as an open country.”
An employee of the consular department of the Russian Foreign Ministry was unable to clearly comment on the situation, saying only that “work on visa fees is underway, their amounts will be clarified, and this will not affect the regime for crossing EU borders in any way.” Meanwhile, former Soviet republics - for example, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan - have already taken concrete steps toward introducing visa-free entry for citizens of economically developed countries.