Poverty Prevents Macedonians from Travelling

Half of the respondents in an opinion poll carried out by the Skopje-based think tank Center for Research and Policy Making, CRPM, said that their low incomes were the primary reason they chose to stay home in 2010, the year the Schengen visa wall fell for Macedonian citizens and visa-free travel to most EU states became possible.

15.3 percent said that they do not have a new and more secure biometric passport, which is a key precondition for visa-free travel. 13.7 percent of the respondents said that they lacked the desire, while 11.8 percent said they simply din't have time to travel.

Most of the respondents who travelled said they have a monthly income that exceeds 300 euros, while most of those who chose to stay home said they earn less than 200 euros per month.

According to the State Statistical Office, the average salary in Macedonia is some 250 euros.

In total, 39.5 per cent of Macedonians travelled abroad last year. Those who travelled to EU countries overwhelmingly chose neighbouring Greece as their favorite destination.

37.7 per cent of all those who travelled last year visited Greece, while 16.8 per cent headed to Germany. 16 per cent went to Switzerland.

After several years of reforms, including increasing border security, introducing biometric passports and boosting the fight against crime, in late 2009 the EU decided to lift the long-standing Schengen wall for the people of Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro.

Visa-free travel is only allowed for tourist and business visits, and Macedonians can stay up to three months at a time.

Following the decision to lift the visa regime, thousands of Macedonians and Serbians streamed into EU countries to apply for asylum status; despite the fact that EU authorities said that their applications would be rejected as illegitimate.

Poverty, which officially affects over 30 per cent of the population in Macedonia, has been blamed for the significant number of migrants who tried to secure asylum status in Western European countries. After several warnings from the EU countries last year, Macedonian authorities were forced to implement increased control measures to prevent their citizens from travelling to the EU to demand asylum.

The CRPM survey was done on a representative sample of over 1000 respondents, from February 2010 to March 2011.