Within the framework of cooperation with the Tourism Ministry on increasing tourist flows into Greece, the Foreign Ministry and the Public Order & Citizen Protection Ministry presented proposals to the European Commission for facilitation and simplification of the procedure for entering our largest islands in the Eastern Aegean. Following these actions, Greece, with the consent of the European Commission and in cooperation with Turkey, implemented a pilot programme for short-term tourist visits from some areas of the Turkish Aegean coast to selected Greek islands in the Eastern Aegean, with simplified entry procedures.
The Programme’s basic outlook and goal is to allow third-country nationals who would normally need, but do not have, a unified Schengen visa to visit Rhodes, Kos, Samos, Chios and Lesvos through a fast and simplified procedure for the issuing of visas upon their arrival.
The Programme went into operation on 7 June, immediately following our service’s notification of the European Commission’s opinion on its compatibility with the Community Acquis, and will last through 30 September 2012.
The available data for the first 60 days of the Programme (7 June-8 July) are positive, showing that 2,224 visas were issued on the 5 islands, with most of those issued on Rhodes and Lesvos. As regards the nationalities of the visitors who benefited from this Greek initiative, first place goes to Turkish citizens, followed by Russians and Ukrainians and smaller numbers of other third-country nationals.
Moreover, the statistical data on visas issued in the first seven months of 2012, as compared with the same period in 2011, by our Consular Missions abroad are especially positive and encouraging. This includes an increase of 111% in visas issued at the Mariupol Consulate General (11,088 visas in the first 7 months of 2012), 71% at the Kyiv Consular Office (53,506), 54% at the Shanghai Consulate General (5,550), 57% at the Novorossisk Consulate General (20,050), 31% at the Edirne Consulate (5,372), 43.5% at the Moscow Consulate General (375,886), and 20.5% at the Izmir Consulate General (8,357).
August 9, 2012