Brussels to Host Second Round of EU-Russia Consultations on Readmission Moscow

On Thursday Brussels will host the second round of consultations between Russia and the EU on concluding a readmission agreement /mutual return of illegal immigrants/. The consultations will last for two days, the European commission representative in Moscow Silvia Kofler has reported.

The first round of consultations was held in Moscow on January 23rd, 2003. Russian and EU experts noted that Russia and the EU had close standpoints regarding a number of principal items of the readmission agreement.

The European commission representatives explained that the agreement required a number of mutual steps from both the EU and Russia in regard to cooperation in returning illegal immigrants to the country they had come from. The European Union has already concluded readmission agreements with a number of third countries. As a rule, such agreements contain issues regulating the readmission procedure, transit actions, methods of proving, time limitations, ways of transit, rules on expenses, database protection as well as protection of other international rights and liabilities.

Readmission agreements also contain liabilities to return people without citizenship or subjects of some other jurisdiction who have arrived in the EU member-states illegally from other countries and vice versa.