Asylum Fears Hit Kosovo Visa Liberalisation Bid

While the long-awaited start to Kosovo’s visa liberalisation process has been put on hold, different branches of the Brussels apparatus disagree over the reasons for the delay.

The European Commission argues that Kosovo has failed to draw up a necessary strategy on readmissions and returns.

But Ulrike Lunacek, the European Parliament’s rapporteur for Kosovo, blamed the setback on the “domestic politics” of some EU states, which have immigration fears.

The Austrian Green MEP said: “It is not the European Parliament that has the problem; it’s not the Commission, it is mostly the member states, which just gave a green light to Bosnia and Albania and are reluctant to take the next step [for Kosovo] already.

“I’m still optimistic that the strategy will come for Kosovo but I was too optimist a couple of weeks ago,” she added, referring to an interview given to Prishtina Insight in October in which she predicted that a strategy for Kosovo would be announced imminently.

Lunacek said that member states’ “reluctance” to lift visa requirement on Kosovo was related to concerns about more immigration and asylum-seekers arriving as a result of the liberalized visa arrangements with other Balkan countries.

The issue has caused concern among some member states already, especially after thousands of people travelled this year from Serbia and Macedonia to seek asylum in the EU after the two countries joined the EU’s White Schengen list in January.

Another EU official told Prishtina Insight that both the relevant commissioners had favoured announcing a visa strategy for Kosovo.

However, this was apparently blocked by the Council of Ministers, composed of representatives of member states’ governments.

They agreed only to extend the visa liberalization scheme to Bosnia and Albania.

“They [the Commissioners] both favoured offering a strategy to the Kosovo government but it’s not up to them to decide, it’s in the Council’s hand,” an EU official told Prishtina Insight.

However, Renzo Daviddi, head of the European Commission Liaison Office in Kosovo, said that while concerns about immigration might have influenced the discussion, Kosovo was being held up because its readmission and reintegration plan was not deemed up to scratch.

Prishtina Insight understands that a new strategy has now been submitted to the Commission and is likely to gain approval this year. Daviddi predicted that Kosovo would have a roadmap for visa liberalization “very soon, which means weeks or days”.

He went on to criticise Kosovo’s leaders for not placing its European Union future at the centre of decision-making.
Countries such as Hungary and the Czech Republic had done this in the 1990s and there was no other way of becoming a member, he said. 

“I would like to see the issue of the European integration of Kosovo becoming the centre of the policy-making agenda, as it should be,” he said.

“It was a marginal issue sometime ago, it has become more central, but in the next few years it has to become even more central,” he added.

“If you look at the experience of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s, it became so central that it became a bipartisan issue… For a country that wants to become part of the European Union, this is a must,” he concluded.

Prishtina Insight contacted Besim Beqaj, Minister for European Integration, for a comment, but received no reply.
Earlier this week, Beqaj accused the EU of double standards in its dealings with Kosovo.Kosovo’s Interior Minister,

Bajram Rexhepi, also claimed that the European Commissioner for Home Affair, Cecilia Malstrom, had “prejudices about the Kosovo people”.

The spokesperson for the Commissioner, Michele Cercone, said that the Commission had not promised Kosovo anything regarding a visa strategy. He reiterated that shortcomings over returns and reintegrating Kosovars were the main reason for the delay.

The Council of Ministers on Monday lifted visa requirements for Albania and Bosnia after the EC had deciding that both countries met all the technical criteria.

But the move, the last hurdle in the visa liberalisation process, had faced initial opposition, with two delegations withholding support until new, tougher measures were brought in, to beef up the monitoring process.

These include stricter monitoring mechanisms to slow the influx of economic migrants and asylum seekers and the possibility of expelling states from the visa-free system if abuses take place.

France has expressed particular concern about the extension of the visa liberalisation process in recent months.
Lunacek said she feared that if problems with the visa-free system arose with Albania and Bosnia, she was “afraid that there will more hindrances to the process with Kosovo”.