Brussels Subjects Balkan Visa Deal to Scrutiny

EU ministers are to assess whether the number of Balkan asylum-seekers is rising or declining, and decide whether the visa free regime may need to be suspended.

“There is a possibility of doing that,” the EU Commissioner for home affairs, Cecilia Malmstroem, said on Tuesday after talks in Skopje with Macedonian leader Nikola Gruevski.

“Hopefully we will not have to do that but the [EU] member states need to see that the trend is decreasing, and that all countries in the region are taking appropriate measures to stop unfounded asylum seekers,” she added.

In May the European Commission proposed setting up a mechanism that would allow the EU to suspend the visa-free regime for certain states under "exceptional" circumstances. The Commission said the "safeguard clause" would be a “last resort” to curb the problem if all other efforts failed.

Gruevski assured Malmstroem that toughened controls were already resulting in a sharp drop in the number of Macedonians claiming asylum in Western Europe.

“Macedonia has done a lot on these issues both in the long and short terms,” Malmstroem acknowledged, adding, however: “There needs to be additional measures.”

In April 725 people from Macedonia claimed asylum in Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and Germany. In August that number was down to ten.

Between December 2009 and December 2010, the EU Schengen countries lifted visa requirements for Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro. As a result, only people from Kosovo in the Western Balkans cannot travel visa-free to the EU.

This occurred after the five countries had all undertaken major reforms in passport security, border control, the fight against illegal migration, organized crime and corruption, and human rights.

However, since visa requirements were lifted, the number of asylum requests in the EU from nationals from these countries has soared.

The vast majority are Roma from Serbia and Macedonia, living in extremely poor conditions back home. Most sought asylum in Germany, Sweden and Belgium.

The EU countries are clear that poverty is not a criterion for claiming asylum and they have sent nearly all these people back home.

The EU has since urged Serbia and Macedonia to step up border controls and other measures in order to curb the trend. As part of their response, Serbia and Macedonia probed several tour operators suspected of organizing the transport of asylum-seekers and closed some of them down.

During this week Malmstroem attended a regional ministerial meeting in the Macedonian town of Ohrid joined by all interior ministers of the Western Balkans.

Fighting corruption, trafficking and organized crime as well as ways to help the Roma community, so that they stop flooding into EU countries, were high on the agenda.