Currently, thousands of Russian nationals residing abroad are facing an increasingly daunting and likely prospect of not getting their passports renewed. The odds of this scenario playing out are on the rise as Russia is eyeing the amending of its migration policy with new restrictions modeled after the already active restrictions imposed by the Belarusian authorities on the republic’s citizens. This risk may, in turn, lead to the erosion of a legal status for hundreds of thousands of individuals and eventually overload on Europe’s immigration structures.
Our study explores and details the current practice European governments employ to handle individuals who are not holders of national passports or similar domestic I.D.’s. It also describes the sentiment and opinions common among the Russians living in Europe with regards to the matter in question. Besides, the paper argues for an alternative approach to the policy under scrutiny, the one based on the best international practices, which involves a simple and faster issuance procedure for temporary travel documents as an efficient alternative to the convoluted asylum procedure policy.
The major study findings stem from the fact that while Western countries already have various travel document procedures for stateless persons and refugees in place, the implementation thereof remains largely inconsistent and sporadic. Often, the European bureaucracy proves too sluggish to be able to address the newly arising challenges in due time, which can only exacerbate the problem of political and antiwar exiles winding up without a properly documented legal status. Precedents from history, e.g. Nansen passports or DP documents, underscore the feasibility of effective international policy procedures in this regard.
Our vision is that the most realistic solution would be the establishment of a single Europewide standard conducive to a simpler and faster travel document issuance procedure for antiwar exiles who are being politically persecuted at home.
The key guidelines we would suggest advocate for a simpler and faster travel document issuance procedure through cutting the red tape; relaxed requirements for applicants having to prove the inability to obtain a passport in their home country and/or at a consular institution; a single, binding E.U.-wide standard minimizing potential country-specific policy discrepancies; and crucially, the adoption of an emergency procedure whereby Russian nationals could be granted temporary European travel titles in the event the Russian government tightens up its passport renewal policy and/or mass-revokes the exiles’ passports.
On top of being a routine bureaucratic procedure, the issuance of travel documents is a major human rights advocacy tool. The E.U. should embrace a more proactive stance by creating the unified standards and pre-empting a potential mass-scale legal void. It will both serve as a major humanitarian cause and beef up Europe’s security. It is our belief that instead of the E.U. merely navigating the aftermath of the challenging developments, it should be anticipating and tackling them in due time.