MOSCOW. March 9 (Interfax) - The refugee crisis in Europe may have implications for the migrant situation in Russia, Federal Migration Service (FMS) chief Konstantin Romodanovsky has said.
"We believe that the European problems may also complicate the situation in Russia. We should not persuade ourselves that everything is all right with migration here and that the European problems will spare us," he told the Russia Today television channel in an interview on Wednesday.
"We are evaluating possible implications of the European crisis for the situation in Russia and learning lessons from the mistakes made in European policy," Romodanovsky said.
The European Union was not ready for mass arrivals of refugees from the Middle East, the FMS head said.
"Our analysis of the situation in EU countries shows that the European Union has been unable to handle the migration processes. The EU has yet to elaborate a consolidated position. Some countries have exhibited their readiness to take in migrants and a liberal attitude to refugees, while others are refusing to do anything with them and are building walls on their borders," Romodanovsky said.
"By providing lavish allowances to refugees without integrating them into the labor market and reunifying families, EU countries have failed to notice that all these people will demand the fulfillment of their rights. That is an obvious miscalculation. The policy of multiculturalism has proven to be inefficient," the FMS chief said.
The number of foreigners trying to cross into Finland via Russia has grown since last fall, he said. Those were Syrian citizens at first, and then people came from other countries of the Middle East, Asia and Africa, Romodanovsky said.
"We have had a number of meetings with our Finnish colleagues devoted to this issue. The partners told us about their idea of resolving the situation and we shared our proposals," he said.
Experts from Russia and Finland have coordinated a draft interdepartmental memorandum on bolstering interaction in migration matters, he said.
"In the future, we will aspire to an agreement on rapid exchange of migration data. Our joint efforts have alleviated the tensions on our common borders," he said.
Romodanovsky told Interfax in an interview on Tuesday that FMS had detained over 60 foreigners in recent days for trying to illegally cross into the European Union from the Murmansk region.