Bosnians Cheer as EU Visa-Free Regime Takes Effect

“We felt like second-rate citizens for too long, but that is over now,” Sabina Curcic, 54, said with a wide grin during the celebration organised in the central square in Sarajevo only a few hours before the visa-free regime came into effect at midnight.

Shouting over the noise of fireworks and singers performing on a stage erected for the occasion, 23-year-old Mirza exclaimed: “no more humiliation in front of embassies, freedom at last!”

Addressing the celebration, Bosnia’s Security Minister Sadik Ahmetovic said the day when visa requirements were lifted “will be remembered for generations”.

However, he again urged citizens not to abuse the new regime, a growing concern in the EU after thousands of Macedonians and Serbians sought asylum in member states of the bloc in the months after visas were lifted for their countries last December.

A group of some 50 youngsters, who boarded a bus in Sarajevo just before midnight on Tuesday to travel to a concert in Slovenia, will most likely be the country’s first citizens to enter the EU without visas.

Smiling and waving their biometric Bosnian passports, the teenagers happily got on the bus, which was to make stops in Banja Luka and Bihac to collect more passengers.

Under the EU decision, some four million Bosnian citizens are now allowed to travel using biometric passports to a total of 28 nations that are either inside Europe’s borderless Schengen zone or aspire to join it.

Tanja Fajon, a Slovenian member of the European Parliament who has been the leading advocate of EU visa liberalisation for Bosnia, also welcomed the “very important step” the county has taken towards Europe.

“This (lifting of visa requirements) is proof that Bosnia-Herzegovina is not only a part of Europe, but I believe it will soon be a part of the European Union,” Fajon told journalists in Sarajevo.

Bosnia’s international administrator Valentin Inzko also welcomed the end of the country’s isolation after its authorities had met a long list of requirements imposed by the EU. 

“The objective was to secure real benefits for Bosnia-Herzegovina citizens by implementing ambitious but sensible reforms – and that is what has been done,” Inzko said.

“The same model can now be applied to a whole range of reforms that will take Bosnia and Herzegovina towards the European Union,” he added.