'This is threatening to create a new iron curtain', warns Grzegorz Gromadzki at the Batory (Soros) Foundation in Warsaw. The Foundation has carried out research to see how the Visegrad Group countries' visa policies have changed following their entrance to the Schengen zone.
Poland has been in the zone since end-2007. Poles can travel without passport controls virtually throughout Europe. In return, Poland had to tighten its visa regime and raise fees for visa services. As a result, Schengen is becoming for Poland's eastern neighbours a symbol of the EU's growing isolation from the post-Soviet countries.
'The way applicants are treated in the European consulates is humiliating', says Roman Kabachiy, a well-known Ukrainian journalist, author of an open letter to the Polish ambassador to Kyiv, in which he protests against the way visas are issued.
Mr Kabachiy conducted an experiment. As a member of the press, he should have received the visa for free and via a simplified procedure. But his application was rejected. Unofficially, diplomats told him he would have gotten the visa had he asked for it as a favour, using his contacts at the embassy.
'But I deliberately wanted to follow the procedure closely to show that, despite pledges to the contrary, the system doesn't work', says Mr Kabachiy.
In Minsk, Moscow, Kyiv and Chisinau, jokes are told about which consulates issue visas and to whom. Young, single women, for instance, are particularly discriminated against. Many consuls suspect they are going to be earning their living as prostitutes. And they are refused visas even if their applications and papers are in order.
'The Schengen zone's visa policy has increasingly boiled down to the consul's good will, or lack of it', says a diplomat working beyond Poland's eastern border.
But the situation is somewhat different in each of the Visegrad Group countries.
'The Czechs were the first to introduce visas for the post-Soviet countries and the regime is tight. We simply don't have a common border with them', explains Michal Thim at the Association for International Affairs in Prague.
Slovakia did similarly but is now trying to soften its visa policy.
'The border is dead, the border regions are suffering because of that, and our relations with our neighbours, chiefly Ukraine, have soured', says Vladimir Benc of the Research Center of the Slovak Foreign Policy Association.
Hungary gives preferential treatment chiefly to applicants of Hungarian ethnic origin.
'Poland tries to be flexible. It issues "national visas" for entry only to Poland (chiefly for persons planning to work). But the figures showing a steep fall in the number of Schengen visas issued are indeed alarming', says Olga Wasilewska at the Batory Foundation in Warsaw.
Last year, the number of visas issued by Polish consulates to Belarussians fell by 60 percent, to Ukrainians, by 40 percent, to Moldavians, by 30 percent, and to Russians, by 20 percent.
'The average for the Visegrad Group is some 50 percent', says Mr Gromadzki.
And Hungary? In 2004, it issued nearly 800,000 visas for citizens of the post-Soviet states. Last year, the figure was down to less than 300,000.
'Instead of pledges that the EU will one day scrap the visas altogether, we need specific answers about when and how to simplify the present system', says Mr Thim in Prague.
The Schengen visa is becoming a symbol of Europe's new division. Once the curtain was iron, today it is more like velvet, because the visas are, after all, obtainable. But you have to pay for them, do your share of standing in line, sometimes pay a middleman who, oddly enough, knows how to fix problems. The tight criteria and humiliating procedures hardly make the EU more popular in the post-Soviet countries.
The launch of the Eastern Partnership agenda is a good moment for starting a more serious debate about lifting the visa regime. It is clear that this will not happen overnight. It is also clear that the present economic crisis makes it more difficult for the satiated Europe to contemplate opening itself to its poorer part. But a Europe closed to its neighbours is in contradiction with the essence of the European values.
Translated by Marcin Wawrzyńczak
Źródło: Gazeta Wyborcza
