Czechia wants to ban Schengen travel for Russian diplomats

The Czech Republic is proposing to restrict the movement of Russian diplomats in the Schengen Area, announced Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský (Pirates/Greens/EFA) on Tuesday.

To ensure spies are not hiding among Russian diplomatic passport holders,  The Financial Times reported earlier that Czechia is proposing mandatory biometric passports for Russian diplomats at the EU level.

“I can confirm that such a proposal exists. Negotiations are not closed, so I cannot give details. I think that colleagues from European countries understand that spying activities pose a risk, and it is a public fact that a number of spying activities take place under diplomatic cover,” Lipavsky told Deník N.

According to the Czech proposal, Russian “diplomats” or secret agents with diplomatic cover who come to Europe only for a short time would not be allowed to travel to any EU country other than the one for which they have been issued a visa.

“In fact, we want to put Russian ‘travel’ diplomats on the sanctions list. Alternatively, we want a milder version, i.e. if we find a Russian diplomat in Prague without a visa for the Czech Republic, we could automatically expel him,” a diplomatic source told Deník N.

In recent years, Czechia has expelled dozens of Russian secret agents with diplomatic cover in recent years – particularly following the revelations that Russian agents were behind the explosion of an ammunition depot in Vrbětice in 2014.

(Aneta Zachová | Euractiv.cz)

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