Makei: We Will Have Common Currency With Russia Someday In Future

The Belarusian Foreign Minister has spoken about the mutual recognition of visas with the Russian Federation.

Belarus and Russia continue discussing the agreement on mutual recognition of visas. Technical issues that arose in December, are now being solved. Foreign Minister Uladzimir Makei announced it, tut.by reports.

– The agreement is being discussed, there still are some things to be solved, – Makei said. – The most important thing for us is that there will be no passport control on the internal border for citizens of third countries. In 1996, the President of Belarus and the then Prime Minister of Russia Viktor Chernomyrdin broke that barrier, removed the border between our states. Since then, there have been no problems until the recent time, when third-country nationals started to have certain difficulties crossing our border. We are now working with our partners,” – Makei said.

According to the Foreign Minister, the parties did not sign the document in December, since “technical details arose that required discussion from both sides.”

– Now many issues are being discussed, – Makei said. – The task is to cancel control for third-country nationals at our joint border, as it was before, so that we could have a single migration card, which, I think, had existed since 2004. Everything was normal, border crossings were registered up to a certain point, when some problems occurred.

Vladimir Makei also stressed that they were not talking about a common visa, but about mutual recognition of visas.

– You know, in the future, we may even have a single currency. I cannot think far too ahead. So far, we are talking about the mutual recognition of visas. And we must make it the way that will be mutually beneficial for the citizens of our countries, and in general for both states,” – Makei said.

Earlier, State Secretary, Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Grigory Karasin said that Russia and Belarus had almost completed the preparation of an agreement on the mutual recognition of visas.

“We are currently working on a new agreement on the mutual recognition of visas. Technically, the work is completed. We expect that it will be signed in the near future. We will have a number of important bilateral events, so it will be possible to sign the agreement as part of them,” – RIA Novosti quotes Karasin.

We remind, that at the meeting of the Union Council of Ministers, which took place on December 12–13 in Brest, the agreement with Russia on the mutual recognition of visas was not signed. According to the Prime Minister of Belarus Siarhei Rumas, the Belarusian side did not manage to complete the internal procedures under the agreement.

On December 14, during a press conference with the Russian media, Lukashenka confirmed this and said that he had already received the document.

Later, an official agreement on the mutual recognition of visas between the government of the Russian Federation and the government of Belarus was published on the official Internet portal of legal information in Russia. It defines which roads allow foreigners to drive into two countries by car and why they can be refused entry.