The European Union will not raise the visa fee for Russian citizens. In the foreseeable future, residents of our country will be able to ride the European continent at the same rates. "The increase in the visa fee will not affect the lower visa fee of 35 euros, established by agreements on visa facilitation, which were concluded between the EU and a number of third countries such as Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan," RIA Novosti quotes the explanations received from the press service of the European Commission.

Earlier today it became known that the executive body of the EU decided to raise by one third, to 80 euros, a visa fee for third-country nationals. Corresponding changes were made to the general visa code of the Schengen zone, said the European Commissioner for Internal Affairs, Migration and Citizenship Dimitros Avramopulos. "With this small increase, our visas will still be cheaper than, for example, in the US or China," added the EU representative.

The need to increase the fee in the European Commission was explained by the fact that the EU has to keep too many personnel in visa centers of different countries. It is very expensive to keep these employees. Therefore, part of the costs decided to shift to travelers.

The total amount of visa revenues received by the EU in a year is very high. For example, in 2016 g. Schengen visas received more than 15 million people. While maintaining the volume of human traffic from countries with which the EU has concluded visa agreements, in the future, the issuance of visas will bring the European Union at least 1.2 billion euros per year.

With the issuance of Schengen visas for Russians, as a rule, problems do not arise. The share of refusals in issuing visas in the Schengen countries is only 1% - this is one of the lowest rates in the world. Meanwhile, the simplicity of registration of entry documents largely depends on the country of circulation.

So, the easiest way is to give out to the Russians multiple long-term Schengen visas Italy, Greece, France and the Czech Republic.

Stories of France and the Czech Republic are more stable and faster than others, and Greece is leading by the minimum number of required documents. Some visa centers (for example, in Hungary, Slovenia and Portugal), on the contrary, are unstable. With problems when issuing visas to European countries, only residents of Crimea are facing, since the EU does not recognize the peninsula as a Russian territory and recommends Crimeans to apply to all visa issues on the territory of Ukraine.