OREANDA-NEWS. February 20, 2008. Belarus is a most vigorous advocate of the further simplification of the visa regimes between Belarus and the EU, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of Belarus Andrei Popov told when commenting on mass media reports asserting that Belarus is allegedly “erecting visa walls with a dramatic increase in the Belarusian visa fees for EU and US citizens”.

Advocating further simplification of visa requirements between Belarus and EU, “we understand that we act in the interests of people here,” Andrei Popov said. “In our recent comments on the visa issues for the media, we drew particular focus to our numerous written communications to this effect that had been sent out to high dignitaries of the EU and European Commission,” Andrei Popov noted. Under such circumstances, bare statistics work better than words. So in January of 2008 the Belarusian diplomatic missions based in the “new” Schengen countries issued 20 % more visas compared to January of 2007.

According to Andrei Popov, “big-time news” is created around the issue where Belarus’ point has been put across for a few times now, in a sincere and detailed manner; the authors of the headlines are simply juggling with facts. “In the interests of objectivity, I will get the main thing clear again. The increase in visa fees was initiated precisely by the European and American parties. Everyone is well aware that in the case of Europe, for instance, visa fees were raised unilaterally for Belarusians along with reference made to the territorial expansion of the Schengen agreements. It is not clear, though, how visa fees are related to this event,” Andrei Popov said.

According to him, as per the conventional international practices, we would have had to reciprocate by matching the visa fee to around EUR 60 for every single European country that is part of the Schengen zone. But we acted differently which shows our different approaches to the development of inter-person contacts. We signed agreements on the simplification of visa procedures with neighbouring countries (Latvia, Lithuania, Poland). To add more, for citizens of neighbouring countries, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Estonia the price of a single-entry Belarusian visa is set at a level of EUR 25,” Andrei Popov stressed. He also reminded of Belarus’ decision dating back to 2004 that ruled the letter of invite out of paperwork where a short-term guest or business visa is applied for by an EU citizen who is planning to stay in Belarus not more than 30 days.

“Along with the decision of Belarus to raise visa fees for US citizens which reciprocated the growing US visa fees, Belarus has moved to simplify Belarusian visa formalities by canceling the letter of invite,” the Foreign Ministry official went on to say. “Reciprocity would follow neither on the part of Europe, nor the US,” Andrei Popov emphasized.

“Apparently, it is only up to journalists of little integrity or ignorant people to talk about “visa walls” on this end. We believe this sort of coverage is either evidence of inept journalism or explicit and deliberate attempts to “pass the buck”, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry Andrei Popov concluded.