The government in Belgrade has recently aroused the displeasure of many EU countries with its entry policy. The German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD), for example, recently railed: “Serbia must change its visa practice, now and not at some point.” The background was a significant increase in illegal entry into the EU via the Balkans. Since migrants from Syria, Afghanistan and Turkey were increasingly coming from countries such as India, Tunisia and Burundi, Serbia came into focus – with its visa practice, which, as Faeser put it, “is not very nice”.
Irrespective of aesthetic values, the practice looks like this: Citizens of numerous countries can enter Serbia without a visa, for example by plane. For some travelers, this is then obviously associated with the temptation to get past official border checkpoints into the EU. The practice could get in the way of Serbia’s chances of joining the EU, Faeser threatened. EU Interior Commissioner Ylva Johansson promised that, in the worst case, Serbia would have to be “punished” – for example by stopping visa-free travel for Serbian citizens to EU countries.
Does Serbia prefer countries that don’t recognize Kosovo’s independence?
When asked by SZ, the Serbian ambassador in Berlin, Snežana Janković, was “concerned” about what was being said about her country: “Sometimes the impression was given that the Serbian visa practice was the main problem with irregular migration to the EU .” On the other hand, she refers to official figures from Belgrade, according to which the majority of those migrants who have entered the Republic of Serbia since the beginning of the year have come across the land borders from neighboring countries such as North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Albania. It was only 6.67 percent via Belgrade Airport. Overall, the increase in people from Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan was the highest recently.
Nevertheless, according to Janković, “the concerns of our German and European partners have been understood” and they want to “help solve the problem”. For example, Serbia has already tightened the entry requirements for people from India, Burundi, Cuba and Tunisia: You now have to show a paid return ticket with a fixed departure date. By the end of the year, President Aleksandar Vučić has announced that Serbia’s visa policy will be “essentially brought into line” with that of the EU. Details would be worked out by a working group.
Recently, accusations have repeatedly been made that Belgrade’s visa policy favors citizens of countries that – like Serbia – refuse to recognize the independence of neighboring Kosovo. Ambassador Janković sharply rejects this, as well as the accusation coming from the FDP that Serbia, in agreement with Moscow, wants to smuggle migrants into the EU in a targeted manner: The relevant agreements have already been in place with most of the countries whose citizens can enter Serbia without a visa Decades, so it is a “legacy of the former Yugoslavia”. At the time, the country was a founding member of the “Movement of Non-Aligned States”, which did not want to join either of the two power blocs during the Cold War.