The Baltic countries are finalising a general agreement on restricting entry for the Russian citizens holding Schengen visas, foreign policy chiefs of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have announced on Wednesday.
“The Baltic countries have broadly reached [an agreement],” Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics told reporters after a meeting of the Nordic-Baltic Eight (NB8) foreign ministers in Kaunas.
Final decisions would be taken at the national level, he added.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said that this issue was likely to be resolved shortly.
“I hope now it will be a matter of days, perhaps weeks,” he added.
In Lithuania, a draft government decision on the extension of the state of emergency, registered on Wednesday, proposes to “restrict the passage of citizens of the Russian Federation across the external border of the European Union”.
According to the draft, only Russian citizens who meet the criteria set by the Lithuanian government would be allowed to enter the country.
These criteria should be drawn up by the Foreign Ministry in agreement with other countries in the region.
Lithuanian and other Baltic countries are taking tougher measures than the EU, which plans to end a simplified visa regime for Russian citizens.
Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu stressed that the countries were coordinating individual national agreements, and not an international agreement.
Earlier reports said that the regional-level solution relating to Russian tourists would also involve Poland and Finland.
The Foreign Ministry told BNS that Warsaw stuck to its commitments and intended to participate in the common agreement with the Baltic countries on restricting the flow of Russian tourists.
Meanwhile, Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said on Wednesday that Helsinki was waiting for a clarification from the European Commission as to whether the country could bar entry for the Russians holding Schengen visas issued by another country.
“We want to have legal clarification from the Commission,” he said.
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