Germany to relax visa rules for Russian workers despite spy warning

Germany is to relax visa necessities for expert workers from Russia, simply because the nation’s home intelligence company warned of a heightened danger that Russian nationals working for German corporations may very well be recruited for industrial espionage.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s authorities is streamlining the visa software course of by exempting Russian workers with specialised experience in areas equivalent to IT and communication expertise from case-by-case assessments via the federal employment division.

The so-called “global approval for access to the labour market”, which applies solely to Russian workers of German corporations who’re incomes not less than €43,992 a 12 months, will final till 30 September.

Between the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the start of May, Germany has issued greater than 600 visas for Russian expert workers, which permit for an extended keep in Germany than the 90-day, so-called Schengen visa.

The German overseas workplace advised information company dpa it had issued about 350 work visas by way of its Moscow embassy in April, as well as to an extra 190 working visas issued by the overall consulate in St Petersburg. Most of these in receipt of such visas have been already working for German corporations, dpa mentioned.

Germany is already house to about 235,000 Russian passport holders, greater than another nation within the European Union.

Only final week, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution issued a particular warning that Russian nationals who have been about to transfer to Germany, and people already working within the nation, confronted an elevated danger of being blackmailed or in any other case pressurised into accumulating info of use to a Russian economic system more and more minimize off from world data networks.

“Russia is increasingly isolated through the sanctions imposed in reaction to the war in Ukraine”, the report mentioned. “Its economy is cut off from the know-how and technologies of the west.”

Recruitment makes an attempt may happen throughout obligatory appointments with Russian embassies or different bureaucratic our bodies, Germany’s home intelligence company mentioned.

“They may also try to exercise pressure via reprisals against relatives or acquaintances who have remained in Russia”, the report continued. “In general, Russian intelligence services do not shy away from methods like threats and blackmail.”

Asked if the German authorities was introducing particular measures to vet Russian working visa candidates, a spokesperson mentioned that “standard security checks of applicants are being made within the visa process”.

The choice to ease entry for Russian expert workers comes as human rights NGOs mentioned the German authorities was not doing sufficient to ease the visa software course of for unbiased journalists going through repression in Russia.

About 70 Russian journalists and media professionals, most of them workers of the unbiased Russian TV channel Dozhd and the information web site Meduza, have been placed on a humanitarian visa record drawn up by the German tradition ministry – however don’t but qualify for the extra beneficiant visas for expert workers.

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“We want to offer Russian journalists who are being persecuted in Russia protection in Germany”, a spokesperson for the inside minister, Nancy Faeser, mentioned on Monday. “We want to ease entry and speed up processes”.

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