“Our visa policy should reflect this and continue to allow people-to-people contacts in the EU with Russian nationals who are not associated with the Russian government,” it says in the paper that is available to the German Press Agency. They therefore want to maintain a legal framework that allows students, artists, scientists and specialists in particular to enter the EU – regardless of whether they could face political persecution.
One warns against far-reaching restrictions of the visa policy. It is important to prevent the Russian narrative from being fed and from alienating future generations. In addition, so-called “rally around the flag” effects could occur. This means that citizens sometimes tend to stand united behind their leadership in the event of attacks and provocations from outside.
The background to the German-French position is the discussion that has been going on for days about whether Russians should be prevented from traveling to the EU for shopping trips and vacations, while thousands of people are dying in Ukraine because of the war.