Visa en handel zullen de komende EU-Rusland top domineren (en)
BRUSSELS - EU officials will tell Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Brussels on Thursday (15 December) they have "serious concerns" about recent elections. However, discussions on visas and trade are likely to dominate.
The meeting comes a few days after tens of thousands of Russians on the streets of Moscow and St Petersburg called for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to go. The protest against rigged parliamentary elections was the biggest in 20 years.
EU foreign relations spokeswoman Maja Kocjancic said on Tuesday EU officials will complain about electoral violations and urge Moscow to let people protest in peace.
Russia's EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov, in a press briefing on Monday gave a foretaste of what they are likely to hear.
"There was quite a mixed group of people - some waving orange flags [in reference to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine], others waving imperialist flags, some waving red and black anarchist flags. There were parallel protests in support of the president and the prime minister ... all these are expressions of democracy," he said.
"There is one concern for the authorities - abiding by the law. And I can assure you that the laws regulating protests and rallies are no different to those in EU countries."
The title of the EU's official press release on the Medvedev meeting - "EU and Russia Move Strategic Partnership Forwards" - indicates that its priorities lie elsewhere.
Russia will in Geneva the day after the EU summit sign up to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO) after 18 years of talks in what the EU hopes will end some commercial disputes, such as Siberian overflight fees for EU airlines, and provide "impetus" for stalled talks on a new EU-Russia partnership treaty.
Apart from congratulating Medvedev on the move, the EU will on Thursday also agree a set of "common steps" for visa-free travel in future.
WTO ratification is expected to take until mid-2012 and the visa talks are likely to take years.
But EU countries this week are also planning to let Poland and Russia already drop visas for people living near the border of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, creating an immediate feel-good factor.
On foreign policy, Chizhov said Russia will repeat warnings for EU countries to avoid military action in Iran and Syria.
On the financial crisis, he said Russia is "considering" giving more money to the International Monetary Fund to help pay for future EU bail-outs in a sign of the EU's weakened position on the international stage.
The veteran diplomat - this will be Chizhov's 26th EU summit - alluded to the open secret that neither the EU nor Russia want to hold two summits a year but are forced to under the terms of their old bilateral treaty.
He referred to the event as "yet another EU-Russia summit", adding: "It is somewhat difficult to expect every summit to act as a major reassessment of bilateral relations."
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