Presseurop |

EU/Russia | Kaliningrad gets closer to Europe

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:25:28 +0100

The inhabitants of Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave squeezed between Poland and Lithuania, will soon be able to travel without visas to Gdańsk and other cities on the Polish side of the border.

Poles from the Pomeranian and Warmian-Masurian provinces, in turn, will no longer need a Russian visa to go to the Kaliningrad Region to buy petrol, for example, much cheaper there than in Poland, rejoices Gazeta Wyborcza.

All this thanks to an agreement on small cross border movement which is to be signed in Moscow on December 14 by the foreign ministers of Russia and Poland. "Russian diplomacy can claim that this Moscow's first tangible success in relations with the EU. It's been years since Russia signed any deal with the EU [...] dialogue between us has so far been mainly ritual", a Polish diplomat told the Warsaw daily.

Meanwhile Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov expressed hope that the agreement would “herald completely visa-free movement between Russia and the EU".

(News in brief)

Russia-EU | Who will open this window on Europe? (Polityka, Warsaw)

Tue, 10 May 2011 16:30:35 +0100

Residents of a region that considers itself to be a “window on Europe,” the population of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which is located between Poland and Lithuania, want Moscow to establish closer links with the EU. In particular, they are hoping for an end to a requirement for visas for European travel: an “iron curtain” that separates them from Western modernity. (Article)

Kaliningrad | Solidarność spirit inspires anti-Putin demo

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:15:58 +0100

What began as a rally to protest local tax hikes in Kaliningrad turned into “the biggest opposition demonstration in nine years,” Gazeta Wyborcza reports. 30 January, some seven to twelve thousand people gathered in the Russian exclave calling for the end of direct rule from Moscow and the restitution of elections for the position of governer. This eventually led to calls for the resignation of Vladimir Putin himself, the Warsaw daily notes. The protest was led by a 40-year-old electrician, Maksim Dorosiok, the head of Solidarnost (Russian for "Solidarity," named after the Polish Solidarnosc), claiming that Kaliningrad is the most European part of the Russian Federation. Dorosiok declared that “"There is a different spirit at rule here. There is a wind blowing from your Gdansk." He argues that the citizens of Kaliningrad do not get their knowledge about the world from Putin-controlled television but from trips to neighbouring Poland, where “there is democracy, it's cheaper, people earn more, civic bodies function better.”

(News in brief)

Tourism | Kosmopolitan Kaliningrad (Cafebabel.com, Paris)

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:12:19 +0100

Sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, the once forbidding Russian exclave of Kaliningrad now benefits from federal money and oil revenues. Cafebabel.com reports from a city that now offers that familiar mix of Moscow trash and flash. (Article)

CAP | The great European sugar swindle (International Herald Tribune, Paris)

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:47:42 +0100

Nowhere in the world is sugar more expensive than in the European Union. There are two reasons for this – generous CAP subsidies that prop up this €7bn industry…and lucrative scams perpetrated by the beneficiaries, Europe’s own sugar companies. A report from the International Herald Tribune. (Article)

Anti-missile shield | Russia inspires fear and foreboding (Presseurop, )

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:17:56 +0100

Barack Obama's decision to abandon plans for a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic - promised by George Bush - has not been welcomed in either country. The European press expresses its concern about the influence of Moscow in the region. (Article)