Leipzig Case Revives Push for EU Russian Visa Ban

The drone plot at Leipzig airport has given European countries that have long pushed for tighter restrictions on Russian travellers a new argument. German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Wednesday that one of the two suspects identified by German authorities was a Belarusian man travelling on a Russian passport. Investigators believe he entered the Schengen area using a tourist visa issued by Italy. The second suspect was identified as a Russian-born man with a Latvian passport.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Later in the day, Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief, said after an informal meeting of foreign affairs ministers that capitals had shown “broad support” for an EU-wide visa ban on current and former Russian combatants, alongside tougher rules for Russian tourists. “Many member states have flagged… that actually these kinds of tourist visas are used for sabotage acts,” Kallas said. The measures were included in the EU’s latest sanctions package against Russia but watered down after resistance from France, Italy and Greece. France and Italy were also among the EU countries that issued the most visas to Russian tourists in 2025, Euractiv first reported. The Leipzig case has put Italy in an uncomfortable spot. The reported use of an Italian visa by one suspect could intensify pressure on Rome and other reluctant capitals to tighten their rules as Russia steps up sabotage and other forms of hybrid warfare across Europe. Other Topics of Interest Foreign Airlines Begin Suspending Flights to Russia Following Kyiv’s Warning That Its Airspace Is Unsafe Foreign carriers canceled dozens of Moscow flights as Ukraine warned international aviation authorities of growing risks in Russian airspace. On the margins of the meeting, Antonio Tajani, Italy’s foreign minister, told Eddy in a huddle with journalists that Italian authorities would investigate the report “to verify the facts.” He was responding to a question about whether the case could prompt Rome to rethink its position on Russian visas. The scrutiny comes after Italy’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan and an embassy aide were detained in May over an alleged scheme to issue long-term Schengen tourist visas to Russian citizens who did not meet the eligibility requirements. For Estonia and its allies, which have long viewed Russian travel as a potential channel for espionage and sabotage, Leipzig strengthens the case for closing what they see as a dangerous gap in the EU’s Russian tourist visa rules. “The lesson should be obvious,” Margus Tsahkna, Estonia’s foreign minister, said on X. “This must stop.” Kallas fights back Kaja Kallas resisted calls to fold her European External Action Service into the Commission, after foreign ministers chewed over a German-led proposal in Ireland on Wednesday. “There was broad support for the current institutional set-up,” Kallas said after the meeting. Germany’s ideas got a rather frosty reception, according to two other people briefed on the discussions. The proposal, backed somewhat less enthusiastically by the French, caught many foreign ministers by surprise. A technical fix would be more apt, Kallas suggested. “The problem is not the treaties, not the institutional setup. The problem is the implementation of that setup,” she said, pointing not-so-subtly at the Commission for “duplicating” her service’s tasks. Smaller EU states wouldn’t be happy to lose the co-ordination provided by her double-hatted role. Then she changed gear. Kallas said she could get on board with the proposal on one condition: that she was genuinely empowered to oversee all foreign policy areas in the Commission, from migration and development to trade. That was unlikely, she suggested, while there was “somebody above me that is actually deciding” – in other words, Ursula von der Leyen. Kallas may already have lost control of the reform process she launched. Johann Wadephul, Germany’s foreign minister, seems to have seized the initiative, inviting ministers to a conference in Berlin on 2 December. The future of the EEAS is likely to come up, alongside his rather doomed proposal to move away from unanimity in foreign and security policy. Frankly speaking about the budget Thomas Byrne, Ireland’s Europe minister, told Rapporteur that negotiations over the EU’s next long-term budget were entering a new phase as he hosted ministers for a two-day meeting at Dublin Castle. “I think we’ve gone beyond the scoping phase and we are in the phase now of seeking a landing zone,” he told Eddy. Despite holding strong national positions, capitals understand that a compromise has to be found, he added. By the end of this week, Byrne will have sat down one-to-one with more than half of his counterparts as he seeks a deal before the end of the year. The tone has been “frank,” he said. António Costa, meanwhile, is two-thirds of the way through his tour of the European capitals to build consensus on the budget. Meanwhile, Sigitas Mitkus, who could inherit the negotiations when Lithuania assumes the rotating Council presidency in January, told our budget reporter Victoria Becker that every country wanted to meet Costa’s year-end deadline. But Lithuania was “prepared to finalise the deal” if necessary. Read the full interview. Did Poles tip Iceland’s vote? European integration drew Poles to Iceland in search of work and a different future. Many stayed, raised families and formed the country’s largest immigrant community. Long-established Polish residents who spoke to my colleague Magnus Lund Nielsen argued that the roughly 3,000 Poles eligible to vote in the referendum to restart accession talks had leaned against Iceland’s potential membership. The EU may have transformed Poland, but it offered Iceland less, they said. Benefiting from European integration does not necessarily make someone an integrationist. Read Magnus’ final dispatch from Reykjavík. See the original in Euractiv’s Rapporteur here. Euractiv is a European news website focused on EU policies. It was founded in 1999 by the French media publisher Christophe Leclercq. The website's headquarters and central editorial staff are located in Brussels, with offices in Paris and Berlin.