Finland slows down issuance of tourist visas to Russians

The procedure for issuing tourist visas to Russians is slowing down in addition to the measures already taken, said Prime Minister Sanna Marin, transmits TASS.

“I’ll be honest: we are slowing down the issuance of visas so that they are issued in a different way. [быстро]like before,” she said.

According to Marin, the flow of tourists from Russia remains a problem that needs to be addressed.

16 August Finnish government declared to reduce the number of accepted applications for visas in Russia to 500 per day. The diplomatic mission noted that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs determines the quota of time allotted for filing applications for a visa. 20% of all time is reserved for tourists and 80% for people traveling for other reasons. From the beginning of September, an average of 100 applications per day for tourism visa applicants will be opened, about 10 times less than the current number.

In the press service of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia (ATOR) after that calculatedthat the process of obtaining a Finnish visa will take 4-5 months. According to the association, already now in St. Petersburg, where most of the Finnish Schengen visas are issued, travel agencies take documents for their registration in early October, so already now the visa wait takes about 2.5 months.

18 August Heads of EU foreign ministries agreed about a meeting on 31 August to discuss changes to the Schengen visa code to limit the issuance of Schengen visas to all Russians, except for certain specific categories. First of all, we will talk about changing the visa code, which does not allow a complete cessation of the issuance of visas only on a national basis.

Now the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have already stopped issuing visas to Russians. Denmark and the Netherlands stopped issuing short-term visas, and Estonia decided to close the borders for Russian citizens with visas that were issued by the republic.

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