EU Visa-Free Travel for Macedonia, Serbia Raises Concerns in Western Europe

Belgian State Secretary for Migration and Asylum Policy, Melchior Wathelet addresses the media prior to the Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting at the EU Headquarters in Luxembourg, 09 June 2011 EPA/BGNES

Key Western EU countries are increasingly concerned about the granted visa-free travel to citizens of Macedonia and Serbia, according to reports.

Serbian and Macedonian citizens "risk" losing the freedom to enter the European border-free Schengen area without a visa because their governments are failing to curb an exodus of bogus asylum seekers, according to unofficial warnings by Belgium and other EU states, German press agency DPA said in a report.

Since the EU dropped the visa requirement for Macedonia and Serbia in December 2009, Belgium and Sweden have repeatedly complained of being swamped with asylum requests from Serbians and Macedonians who they claim try to abuse the system.

Belgian Migration Minister Melchior Wathelet is quoted as saying that Belgium still has a lot of such asylum requests.

One diplomat told DPA that Wathelet received backing from a number of countries, including Sweden, Germany and France, during the closed-door meeting of EU Interior Ministers in Luxembourg Thursday.

Wathelet said Macedonia posed a greater problem, and that fewer than 1% of asylum requests from the two Balkan countries were found to be admissible by Belgian authorities.

"The risk (to reintroduce visas) is there ... we asked for a monitoring, there were a certain number of conditions which seemed to have been fulfilled in 2009 and which are no longer today, especially for Macedonia," Wathelet said.

Swedish Migration Minister Tobias Billstrom recognized there was an increased number of manifestly unfounded asylum applications and said that problem has not yet been solved.

"The countries of the Western Balkans need to take responsibility for their citizens," Billstrom is quoted as saying.

In Luxembourg, the European Commission presented a report on how Serbia and Macedonia have made use of their Schengen visa freedom.

Wathelet said it was "not very positive" for Serbia, and "very, very negative" for Macedonia, as figures for bogus asylum seekers from that country "remain very bad."

EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom only told journalists that there was 'a problem,' which was being raised with Belgrade and Skopje.

She said most failed asylum applicants were Roma, and suggested both countries should do more to improve the community's living conditions. In her words, the EU Interior Ministers have made no no formal suggestion today that there would be a suspension of the visa-free regime. She indicated that visas would be reintroduced only as a very last resort.

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