Politico has learned about the EU's plans to tighten visa rules for Russians

The European Commission (EC) plans to submit proposals in January 2027 to tighten the rules for issuing visas to Russian citizens. The initiative is linked to European countries' concerns about security threats. This was reported by Politico on October 11.

Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Stremmer announced the preparation of new restrictions. According to him, Stockholm would like to speed up the process and present the initiative earlier than planned.

"As far as I understand, the EC is preparing a proposal, which, according to my information, should be submitted in January next year. From the Swedish point of view, we would like to see it even earlier," Stremmer said in an interview with Politico.

Poland and Estonia also support the tightening of visa policy. Tallinn, in particular, has proposed restricting entry to the European Union for former Russian military personnel. According to the assessment of Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna, we can talk about about 650 thousand people. At the same time, he called for consideration of restrictions on an individual basis.

European Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner also called on EU countries to reduce the number of visas issued to Russians. According to him, after the initial decrease, the number of such permits stopped decreasing.

"We urge member states to work better in this direction and issue fewer visas to Russian citizens," Brunner said.

According to Politico, in 2025, Russian citizens received about 478,000 visas to travel to the Schengen area, many of them multiple-entry. Some EU countries intend to discuss new visa restrictions at a meeting of the EU Council on Foreign Affairs on October 12. In addition, they may propose additional measures against Russian diplomats.

Rare guests: Germany does not plan to impose a complete ban on issuing visas to Russians

Earlier, the European Commission announced the preparation of new restrictions for Russian citizens.

On October 10, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo called on EU countries to stop issuing tourist visas to Russian citizens due to the alleged threat of sabotage at European enterprises and infrastructure facilities. The head of the Finnish government said that he intends to initiate a discussion on this issue at the European Council summit next week. In his opinion, it makes no sense to give Russians the opportunity to freely move around the EU as tourists.