Analysts Warn Against Kosovo's Continuous Isolation from Schengen
Text by Linda Karadaku for Southeast European Times*
Kosovo analyst Belul Beqaj is one of many Kosovo citizens who easily used to travel in and out of the former Yugoslavia with the old Yugoslav passport. "There was much more free movement at that time compared to today," Beqaj tells SETimes. That changed when the country split apart in the 1990s.
For Beqaj, the main worry now is that Kosovo could remain isolated even as its neighbours gain the right to free movement within the Schengen zone.
"The standardisation of the required criteria demands a longer time and more effective work, which is better than the immediate concequences if Kosovo remains isolated ... a painful illustration of such concequences is the tragedy at the Tisza River border crossing," he says.
In the past year, about 15 Kosovo citizens died while trying to illegally cross the Tisza River border between Serbia and Hungary, guided by cross-border traffickers.
Senior EU officials visiting Kosovo said there are conditions that must be met so that the Kosovo visa liberalisation process can move forward.
During a visit to Pristina last month, EU President Herman Van Rompuy said the visa liberalisation process has technical preconditions.
Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci expects his government to receive the official visas liberalisation guide soon.
At a July meeting of the Dialogue on the Process of the Stabilisation and Association in Pristina, Thaci said his government has undertaken measures and concrete steps to fulfill the necessary criteria and approve legal requirements.
"Starting the official dialogue will enable Kosovo sooner to join the Schengen, something that will enable our citizens' travel without restrictions in the EU … I want to invite the European Commission to evaluate and start the process," Thaci said.
Kosovo analyst Muharrem Nitaj says leaving the young country out of the integration process, while countries surrounding Kosovo are part of it, is nonsensical.
"The fact that there is an EU Mission in Kosovo with a few thousand people, a UN Mission and a peacekeeping NATO military mission in Kosovo, and the country is left aside in the visa liberalisation process, talks more about the failure of Europe than the failure of Kosovo," Nitaj told SETimes.
He says Kosovo is not worse than the rest of the region when it comes to economic development, security, legal infrastructure or other process preconditions.
"If the EU cannot reach a consensus on such a sensible issue, then it's a reflection more of the problems within the EU than in Kosovo…the EU hesitation is counterproductive because it can also encourage illegal border crossing from the countries in the region," says Nitaj.
*This text is courtesy of the Southeast European Times (SET), a web site sponsored by the US Department of Defense in support of UN Resolution 1244, designed to provide an international audience with a portal to a broad range of information about Southeastern Europe. It highlights movement toward greater regional stability and steps governments take toward integration into European institutions. SET also focuses on developments that hinder both terrorist activity and support for terrorism in the region.
Read more about Kosovo on BalkanTravellers.com
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