Winners, Losers and the Future of the Balkan Visa Ghetto

Yesterday, the European Commission proposed that the EU move three West Balkan states, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, from the “Black” onto the “White” Schengen List.

If the proposal is adopted by EU member states as planned before the end of this year, it will be a momentous step for the Balkan region. 

Macedonia was on the verge of civil war in 2001. Montenegro only became an independent state in 2006. For the citizens of all three countries, traveling visa-free to the EU from early 2010 onwards – for the first time since the collapse of Socialist Yugoslavia – will be a cause for celebration. For reformers, it will be a much needed signal that their efforts are paying off. 

Getting to this stage was everything but easy.  Substantial reforms that had to be implemented to meet almost 50 precise criteria ranged from equipping border crossings to increasing document security and deepening police cooperation.  As two former interior ministers, Italy’s Giuliano Amato and Germany’s Otto Schily, told us during a meeting of the advisory board of the ESI White List Project this week in Istanbul, such reforms make Europe safer and the visa requirement redundant.  This is truly a win-win situation. 

This is also a time of great political and economic uncertainty in the Balkans.  In order for EU conditionality to deliver results, the European Commission must be strict when it comes to setting out conditions and fair when it comes to assessing progress and delivering on the EU’s promises. Doing so goes a long way towards restoring the EU’s credibility. 

So far, so good, so incomplete. After all, the Commission's proposal leaves two countries, Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina, on the “Black” list.  It also adds Kosovo “under UN Security Council resolution 1244” to the negative list as an “entity and territorial authority.”

Influential critics in the European Parliament are already complaining that the EU is leaving some of the most fragile states, those that have experienced the worst tragedies of the last two decades, out in the cold. 

Is it morally justified to allow Serbian citizens in Belgrade visa-free travel while denying it to the relatives of Bosniak victims of the Srebrenica genocide?

Critics are rightly concerned about a new worst-case scenario: a situation in which Bosniaks, Albanians and Kosovars find themselves imprisoned inside a new, even smaller enclave;  where Bosnia is torn apart by centrifugal tendencies as Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs obtain the passports of the neighbouring states, leaving Bosniaks isolated.  As one Turkish paper titled today: “European Union leaves Bosnian Muslims out in the cold, once again.” 

At the same time it is necessary to remember that the road to visa-free travel is clearly marked out for all the countries involved.  By judging all the countries by the same rules, the European Commission has made a fair proposal.  Based on roadmap conditions, only those Balkan citizens who hold new biometric passports will be able to benefit from visa-free travel.  Due to botched tenders, delays and lack of focus, however, Bosnia and Herzegovina has delayed the introduction of such passports till early 2010! 
Albania, while ahead of Bosnia, is also behind its more successful neighbours in introducing them.   ESI analysts have in recent weeks examined in great detail the implementation record of all the countries.

The good news is that, given the right focus, Bosnia and Albania can reach Serbia's current record on implementation within the next 12 months.  Bearing this in mind, we call on EU member states to send a signal to both countries’ citizens by moving Bosnia and Albania onto the White List already this year, but suspending the actual application of visa-free travel until all conditions are met. 

While Bosnian and Albanian citizens might be disappointed today, they also know that if certain conditions are met, visa-free travel is within reach.  There is no such hope for Kosovars. For Kosovars, the proposal is an unmitigated disaster.  For the EU’s credibility in Kosovo, it is devastating. 

Witness the hypocrisy: for years, when it came to repatriation, the EU considered Kosovo residents Serbian citizens according to Serbian citizenship laws.  Now the Commission requires Serbia to issue entirely separate passports to all Kosovo residents. Putting in a big 'K' would have been tasteless and the proposal, therefore, resorts to a gimmick: all passports for Kosovo residents are to be issued by one special office (Koordinaciona uprava) in Belgrade – and then no such passport will allow visa-free access.

For years the EU preached the value of a multiethnic Kosovo: and now Kosovo Serbs are asked to get resident status in Serbia – abandoning Kosovo – if they want to have passports that allow them to travel in Europe. 

Some Kosovars who consider the idea of their citizens applying for a passport in Belgrade as a form of treason have prematurely welcomed this. They ignore the fact that the decision to exclude Kosovars in this discriminatory manner is “motivated exclusively by objectively determined security concerns”, as the Commission explains, not by any consensus on Kosovo’s status.

In addition the Commission does not even mention the possibility of a future roadmap for Kosovo. While many Moldovans, Turkish Cypriots or Argentinians (in Spain) can obtain EU member state passports and then travel visa free to Europe, Kosovars holding double citizenship cannot “in view of security concerns regarding in particular potential for illegal migration” (EC, Explanatory Memorandum). 

All Kosovars are seen as a security problem while all Bosnian Serbs can apply for Serbian citizenship, a Serbian passport, and then travel to the EU without raising any such concerns.  If adopted in its current form, the Commission's proposal undermines any notion that current EU members hold out a European perspective for Kosovo. 

“Strict but fair” conditionality has worked in Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro.  It is likely to work in Bosnia and Albania in the near future.  It is in the EU’s interest that it also works in Kosovo.  If putting Kosovo on the Black List does not require any EU consensus on its status, then neither should giving it a road map to then put it onto the White List.

The Commission proposal is a very welcome first step. It needs to be modified, however, in order to prevent new tensions and problems. 

Gerald Knaus and Alexandra Stiglmayer are founders of and senior analysts with the European Stability Initiative, a think-tank that has been continuously monitoring the visa liberalisation process in the Balkans.