European Union foreign ministers decided on September 1 to make it harder for Russians to obtain visas to travel to the bloc but stopped short of approving an EU-wide visa ban that some member states had advocated.
The decision was made at an informal meeting of EU top diplomats in Prague, and it will significantly reduce the number of new visas issued by the EU member states.
The plan now is to make it more time-consuming and costly for Russian citizens to obtain short-term visas to enter Europe’s passport-free travel zone — a 26-country area made up of most of the EU members plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland known as the Schengen area.
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