Visa-free travel between Russia and the EU - what will happen?

Negotiations do not only centre on visa-free travel across the Norwegian-Russian border.

Poland and Russia are looking at a special deal for the Russian exclave Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea. In the longer run several EU countries, including Italy, Spain and Germany, are open to a deal where EU member states with common outer borders defined by the Schengen Agreement should open their borders to Russia. Such a deal would also apply to Schengen members Norway and Iceland. Attracting more Russian tourists is an important driver.

Tourism: EU's third largest industry

Tourism is the third largest industry in the EU after trade and construction. 1.8 million businesses, most of them small to medium, make a living from tourism. More than five percent - nearly ten million people - are employed in the sector within the EU. 

If you count businesses that are indirectly dependent on tourism - mainly within communication and culture - some 12 percent of all EU jobs are tourism related. So it is not an altogether insignificant industry which is lobbying for an ease of visa regulations. 

EU is the world's leading tourist area, welcoming 370 million tourists in 2008. 7.6 million of them came from the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China. That is a dramatic increase on 2004, when 4.2 million BRIC tourists visited.

Big increase in Russian tourism

In Norway there has been a big increase in the number of hotel stays by Russian tourists and business travellers. 121,000 guest-nights were registered in 2009, while until the end of August this year the number had passed 140,000. Five years ago Russians spent only 30,000 nights in Norwegian hotels.

Norway often highlights the fact that 8,000 people crossed the Norwegian-Russian border in 1990 while 130,000 do so every year now. Yet this is just a trickle compared to the Finnish-Russian border. By the end of 2010 eight million people will have passed the two border posts Imatra and Nuijamaa. Two thirds are Russian. Duty free sales to non-EU citizens has increased by a quarter this year according to Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat.

The potential is hardly exhausted. There are 12 million border crossings a year at the Swedish-Finnish border at Torneå and Haparanda.