Russia and the EU agreed in October to sign an agreement on relaxing visa regulations for certain categories of people.
The draft agreement seeks to facilitate the procedure to obtain single-entry visas for up to three months and multi-entry visas for Russian and EU students, researchers, politicians, diplomats, and businessmen.
The document also unifies visa charges and clearly outlines a timeframe. Under the draft agreement, diplomatic representations and consular departments decide on issuing a visa within 10-30 days, or three days in case of emergency.
In January, Austrian Ambassador to Moscow Martin Vukovic said Russia and the EU could sign the visa facilitation agreements in spring 2006.
Russian presidential aide on Europe Sergei Yastrzhembsky said in early February that experts and diplomats had virtually completed work on the text of the agreement and added that the document had to be translated into 20 languages. He also echoed Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in saying that the agreement would hopefully be signed in spring.
