On the proposed EU visa ban for Russians
We can go the way of the Spanish Inquisition. Or Ramzan Kadyrov's Chechnya. Why would we, though?
Nearly six months into Russia’s war on Ukraine, voices calling for a Europe-wide travel ban for all Russians are moving from the margins into the political mainstream.. A few days ago, Finland’s PM Sanna Marin urged the EU to stop issuing tourist visas to Russians citizens, following a similar call from Estonia, and as of August 11, Estonia will no longer admit Russians holding Schengen visas issued by Estonia.
These statements and the ensuing public debate have revealed not only cluelessness about how visa and immigration processes work (including among the very same political leaders tasked with implementing these laws), but also an abyss of illiberal thinking: collective punishment, racist essentialism, thought-policing, discrimination, arbitrary rule, double standards and muddled thinking about which kind of behavior warrants government sanction.
All cheerfully and self-righteously peddled as common sense, sound policy that any upstanding democrat would support. European leaders, offended at the sight of middle-class Russians getting a tan on an Italian beach instead of howling and gnashing their teeth in the impoverished Bardakistan (“cesspool land”) they imagined Russia would become once the West withdrew its favors, sell out our values with astonishing ease. That’s the same values Ukraine is supposedly fighting a war over, on our behalf. Or something like that. Ask Ursula von der Leyen.
There has been pushback, from human rights, moral or pragmatic perspectives, such as this, by Jeremy Morris. That’s encouraging. So is the fact that the lack of a safe, functional option of claiming asylum for those who cannot physically access EU territory is once again discussed.
Conspicuously missing, though, is a principled rejection of the visa ban idea by senior European officials, on legal, ethical or political grounds. Far too many, like in the tweet below, are instead going with the facile, shallow, feel-good flow:
In the following, I pick through some of the problematic and misleading arguments dominating this debate.
Minor, but important, detail to start off: there isn’t even such a thing as an “EU tourist” visa. The countries of the Schengen zone (EU plus/minus a few) issue a “Uniform Schengen Visa” , which allows holders to spend up to 90 days at a time in any of these countries, doing anything besides formal, paid employment or for-degree study: tourism, medical treatment, business meetings, academic research, performing at cultural events, getting married (especially important for same-sex couples, who cannot do this in Russia), visiting relatives etc.
These visas can be valid for up to 5 years, so their holders might relax on a Greek beach during one trip, come back for trade fair in Denmark half a year later and celebrate the New Year at their Czech in-laws’ dacha, all on the same visa.
So if you hear European politicians, their foreheads wrinkled with faux concern, complain about Russians frolicking across Europe as tourists while their country is waging a war, keep in mind that there isn’t a “tourist visa”. They’re engaging in manipulation. A visa ban would affect any and all short-term travel by Russians.
Next, a visa ban is a bit like the no-fly-zone that was being peddled in spring: a back door into a state of war. Banning all or most travel by Russians to Europe would be an extreme step that implies something quite dangerous. Travel bans normally only happen between countries engaging in open war and sometimes not even then. Whatever meaty declarations High Representative Josep Borrell might make about battlefields, neither the EU nor any of its member states are in a state of war with Russia. Russia, the EU and all of its member states maintain diplomatic and consular relations with each other.
A visa ban could have quite dramatic consequences. Just stopping to issue uniform Schengen visas wouldn’t do the trick, since many Russians hold visas that are valid for up to 5 years. We’d have to invalidate visas issued long ago and start turning people away at the airport and border, leading to chaotic scenes. As an ultima ratio, we might have to round up and deport Russians who are in Europe after the ban goes in effect. This, then, would no longer be much different from the mass internment of enemy aliens during WWI. All while, I repeat, we’re not actually at war with Russia.
I also notice the pronounced lack of a grasp of liberal governance. PM Marin and others singing from the same hymn sheet keep saying “a tourist visa is a privilege, not a right”. Ummm, not quite. True enough, there is no inherent right, nor one specifically laid down by EU visa law nor by international law, to obtain a short-term, non-residential, uniform Schengen visa. However, there is a right not to be subjected to discrimination (including on the basis of nationality), profiling or arbitrary rule in the application of administrative law.
The legal rationale underpinning the EU’s visa regime is that travel must be facilitated by default, unless visa applicants appear unable or unwilling to comply with the visa’s terms (primarily, go home after those 90 days) or pose a security or public health risk. That is emphatically not the same as a “privilege”. A “privilege” is something absolutist monarchs grant. The EU and its member states are not in the business of bestowing royal favors.
Other rights-based norms also apply to the visa process. It has been suggested that only Russians who object to the war should be allowed to enter the EU. Sounds eminently reasonable, right? Wrong. Because of a thing called freedom of thought. It makes my hair stand on end that so many in the European mainstream would calmly brush that off. People are free to think all sorts of things, even offensive ones. To the extent that it does not create a threat to others (a proper threat, not just a nuisance), they are also free to speak and write those things.
Europe admits millions of travelers from all over the world and among them are countless numbers who harbor racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-democratic thoughts; who approve of bombing this, that or several countries; who share conspiracy theories online; who hold colonial attitudes towards this or that part of the world etc. We obviously cannot filter them out, nor should we even consider attempting it, through misguided, slippery-slope policies like screening their social media activity. Remember, “filtering” and trawling through social media profiles is what the Russian security services do to Ukrainians fleeing occupied territories. This would turn European consular officers into the Spanish Inquisition.
Europe can handle visitors with unsavory views. Our societies are robust enough to tolerate the presence of Russians, those with offensive views and those who care about Instagram more than politics. The alternative would be much worse, for us.
Among others, we’d be engaging in collective punishment. I don’t know what’s worse about that, the collective or the punishment. On the collective part, I want to go deep and broad: arguably one of the great moral and intellectual achievements of the modern era is that an individual can only be held accountable for his or her own actions. Not for the actions of their family, clan, ancestors, neighbors, compatriots or indeed their government. When Western leaders blithely suggest we ditch this fundamental principle, and the commentariat nods approvingly, we should prick our ears.
I know Nazi comparisons are bad form, but I can’t not mention that it was the Nazis that brought back Sippenhaft after a thousand years and made it law. For a contemporary taste of it, remember that collective punishment is the de facto law of the land in Ramzan Kadyrov’s Chechnya.
On to punishment. Visa laws and policies are not enacted for punitive purposes (even if we like to joke about how they’re torture). So far, so obvious. Using them in this manner is highly problematic. It veers into the territory of, if not cruel, then certainly unusual punishment. What’s next under this logic of creative punishment by using the means at our disposal? Grounding planes full of Russian tourists on the tarmac for hours without water and air conditioning? Subjecting each of them to a cavity search at the airport? That just apart from the fact that we have neither moral nor legal standing to mete out punishment to random Russian citizens, who have not broken any laws.
Some of the opponents of a visa ban argue that it is in the West’s interest to let Russians travel to Europe. Because those travelers disproportionately oppose Putin and his war and may use their stay in Europe to organize opposition in exile. Or because those leaving Russia are predominantly young, educated professionals whose departure leaves Russia less competitive. Or because Russians, seeing how well we live in the West, will rethink their support for Putin’s dingy autocracy. All of those may be true (the one about Russians being bowled over by Western lifestyles feels a bit dated, though), but they fall short of the principle of the matter.
We shouldn’t ban Russians from traveling to Europe, but not because it might net us some benefits. We shouldn’t do this because we’d be crossing to the dark side.
Phew. Last point: I don’t think this ban will happen, certainly not on an all-EU level. European officials floating the ban know that all too well. It raises way too many knotty legal and practical questions, never mind lost tourism income (touchy subject, since the pandemic especially). When they talk about it anyway, it’s politics as usual - they’re throwing a bone to those baying for Russian blood.